"Never--never."
"Then why shouldn't you get better?"
She also hesitated, after which she answered: "Because I'm going to
die."
My music ceased, in spite of me, and we sat looking at each other. Helen
Chantry woke up with a little start and asked what was the matter. I
rose from the piano and I couldn't help saying "Dear Helen, I haven't
the least idea." Louisa sprang up, pressing her hand to her left side,
and the next instant I cried aloud "She's faint--she's ill--do come to
her!" Mrs. Chantry bustled over to us, and immediately afterwards the
girl had thrown herself on her mother's breast, as she had thrown
herself days before on mine; only this time without tears, without
cries, in the strangest, most tragic silence. She was not faint, she was
only in despair--that at least is the way I really saw her. There was
something in her contact that scared poor Helen, that operated a sudden
revelation: I can see at this hour the queer frightened look she gave me
over Louisa's shoulder. The girl however in a moment disengaged herself,
declaring that she was not ill, only tired, very tired, and wanted to go
to bed. "Take her, take her--go with her," I said to her mother; and I
pushed them, got them out of the room, partly to conceal my own
trepidation. A few moments after they had gone Christopher Chantry came
in, having finished his cigar, and I had to mention to him--to explain
their absence--that his daughter was so fatigued that she had withdrawn
under her mother's superintendence. "Didn't she seem done up, awfully
done up? What on earth, at that confounded place, did she go in for?"
the dear man asked with his pointless kindness. I couldn't tell him this
was just what I myself wanted to know; and while I pretended to read I
wondered inextinguishably what indeed she had "gone in" for. It had
become still more difficult to keep my vow than I had expected; it was
also very difficult that evening to converse with Christopher Chantry.
His wife's continued absence rendered some conversation necessary; yet
it had the advantage of making him remark, after it had lasted an hour,
that he must go to see what was the matter. He left me, and soon
afterwards I betook myself to my room; bedtime was elastic in the early
sense at Chantry. I knew I should only have to wait awhile for Helen to
come to me, and in fact by eleven o'clock she arrived.
"She's in a very strange state--something happened there."
"And _what_ happened, pray?"
"I can't make out; she won't tell me."
"Then what makes you suppose so?"
"She has broken down utterly; she says there was something."
"Then she does tell you?"
"Not a bit. She only begins and then stops short--she says it's too
dreadful."
"Too dreadful?"
"She says it's _horrible_," my poor friend murmured, with tears in her
eyes and tragic speculation in her mild maternal face.
"But in what way? Does she give you no facts, no clue?"
"It was something she did."