"I'm not coming, Elizabeth, I can't leave her."
"Joan, for the last time I ask you: Will you come with me?"
"No!" said Joan breathlessly. "No, I can't."
Elizabeth turned without another word and left the room and the house.
Joan heard the door clang dully after her, and the sound of wheels that
grew fainter and fainter as the fly lumbered away.
4
The queer days succeeded each other like phantoms. Looking back on the
week which elapsed between Elizabeth's going and her last letter, Joan
found that she could remember very little of that time, or of the days
that followed. She moved about, ate her food, got up and went to bed in
a kind of stupor, broken by moments of dreadful lucidity.
On the sixth day came the letter in the familiar handwriting. The paper
bore no address, only the date, "August, 1901;" a London postmark was on
the envelope.
Elizabeth wrote: