Part 71 (1/2)

”Why, Dinah dear!” she said.

Her dark eyes smiled up at her in welcome, but it was a smile that cut her to the heart with its aloofness, its total lack of gladness.

Dinah stooped to kiss her. ”Are you so tired, dearest? Perhaps I had better go away.”

But Isabel put up a trembling, skeleton hand and detained her. ”No, dear, no! I am not so tired as that. I can't talk much; but I can listen. Sit down and tell me about yourself!”

Dinah sat down, but she could think of nothing but the piteous, lined face upon the pillow and the hopeless suffering of the eyes that looked forth from it.

She held Isabel's hand very tightly, though its terrible emaciation shocked her anew, and so for a time they were silent while Isabel seemed to drift back again into the limitless s.p.a.ces out of which Dinah's coming had for a moment called her.

It was Biddy who broke the silence at last, laying a gnarled and quivering hand upon Dinah as she sat.

”Ye'd better come again in the morning, mavourneen,” she said. ”She's too far off to-night to heed ye.”

Dinah started. Her eyes were full of tears as she bent and kissed the poor, wasted fingers she held, realizing with poignant certainty as she did it the truth of the old woman's statement. Isabel was too far off to heed.

Then, as she rose to go, a strange thing happened. The tender strains of a waltz, _Simple Aveu_, floated softly in broken s.n.a.t.c.hes in on the west wind, and again--as one who hears a voice that calls--Isabel came back.

She raised herself suddenly. Her face was alight, transfigured--the face of a woman on the threshold of Love's sanctuary.

”Oh, my dearest!” she said, and her voice thrilled as never Dinah had heard it thrill before. ”How I have waited for this! How I have waited!”

She stretched out her arms in one second of rapture unutterable; and then almost in the same moment they fell. The youth went out of her, she crumpled like a withered flower.

”Biddy!” she said. ”Oh, Biddy, tell them to stop! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!”

Dinah went to the window and closed it, shutting out the haunting strains. That waltz meant something to her also, something with which for the moment she felt she could not cope.

Turning, she saw that Isabel was clinging convulsively to the old nurse, and she was crying, crying, crying, as one who has lost all hope.

”But it's too late to do her any good,” mourned Biddy over the bowed head. ”It's the tears of a broken heart.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE WRATH OF THE G.o.dS

The paroxysm did not last long, and in that fact most poignantly did Dinah realize the waning strength.

Dumbly she stood and watched Biddy lay the inanimate figure back upon the pillows. Isabel had sunk into a state of exhaustion that was almost torpor.

”She'll sleep now, dear lamb,” said Biddy, and tenderly covered her over as though she had been a child.

She turned round to Dinah, looking at her with shrewd darting eyes. ”Ye'd better be getting along to your lover, Miss Dinah,” she said. ”He'll be wanting ye to dance with him.”

But Dinah stood her ground with a little s.h.i.+ver. The bare thought of dancing at that moment made her feel physically sick. ”Biddy! Biddy!” she whispered, ”what has happened to make her--like this?”

”And ye may well ask!” said Biddy darkly. ”But it's not for me to tell ye. Ye'd best run along, Miss Dinah dear, and be happy while ye can.”

”But I'm not happy!” broke from Dinah. ”How can I be? Biddy, what has happened? You must tell me if you can. She wasn't like this a fortnight ago. She has never been--quite like this--before.”