"You'd be cruel to him," she said. "He's innocent--he's innocent."
"Do you mean _you're_ guilty? What trifle are you magnifying?"
"Do you call it a trifle----?" She faltered and paused.
"Certainly I do, my dear." Then I risked a great stroke. "I've often
done it myself!"
"_You_? Never, never! I was cruel to him," she added.
This puzzled me; I couldn't work it into my conception. "How were you
cruel?"
"In the garden. I changed suddenly, I drove him away, I told him he
filled me with horror."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because my shame came over me."
"Your shame?"
"What I had done in the house."
"And what had you done?"
She lay a few moments with her eyes closed, as if she were living it
over. "I broke out to him, I told him," she began at last. But she
couldn't continue, she was powerless to utter it.
"Yes, I know what you told him. Millions of girls have told young men
that before."
"They've been asked, they've been asked! They didn't speak _first_! I
didn't even know him, he didn't care for me, I had seen him for the
first time the day before. I said strange things to him, and he behaved
like a gentleman."
"Well he might!"
"Then before he could turn round, when we had simply walked out of the
house together and strolled in the garden--it was as if I were borne
along in the air by the wonder of what I had said--it rolled over me
that I was lost."
"Lost?"
"That I had been horrible--that I had been mad. Nothing could never
unsay it. I frightened him--I almost struck him."
"Poor fellow!" I smiled.
"Yes--pity him. He was kind. But he'll see me that way--always!"
I hesitated as to the answer it was best to make to this; then I
produced: "Don't think he'll remember you--he'll see other girls."
"Ah, he'll _forget_ me!" she softly and miserably wailed; and I saw that
I had said the wrong thing. I bent over her more closely, to kiss her,
and when I raised my head her mother was on the other side of the bed.
She fell on her knees there for the same purpose, and when Louisa felt
her lips she stretched out her arms to embrace her. She had the strength
to draw her close, and I heard her begin again, for the hundredth time,
"Mother, mother----"
"Yes, my own darling."
Then for the hundredth time I heard her stop. There was an intensity in
her silence. It made me wildly nervous; I got up and turned away.
"Mother, mother," the girl repeated, and poor Helen replied with a sound
of passionate solicitation. But her daughter only exhaled in the waiting
hush, while I stood at the window where the dawn was faint, the most
miserable moan in the world. "I'm dying," she said, articulately; and
she died that night, after an hour, unconscious. The doctor arrived
almost at the moment; this time he was sure it must have been the heart.
The poor parents were in stupefaction, and I gave up half my visits and
stayed with them a month. But in spite of their stupefaction I kept my
vow.