Part 39 (2/2)

”Everything is changed,” she said to Dowie and Mademoiselle who sat on either side of her bed, sometimes pressing her head down onto a kind shoulder, sometimes holding her hand and patting it.

”I shall be afraid of everybody forever. People who have sweet faces and kind voices will make me shake all over. Oh! She seemed so kind--so kind!”

It was Dowie whose warm shoulder her face hidden on this time, and Dowie was choked with sobs she dared not let loose. She could only squeeze hard and kiss the ”silk curls all in a heap”--poor, tumbled curls, no longer a child's!

”Aye, my lamb!” she managed to say. ”Dowie's poor pet lamb!”

”It's the knowing that kind eyes--kind ones--!” she broke off, panting. ”It's the KNOWING! I didn't know before! I knew nothing.

Now, it's all over. I'm afraid of all the world!”

”Not all, cherie,” breathed Mademoiselle.

She sat upright against her pillows. The mirror on a dressing table reflected her image--her blooming tear-wet youth, framed in the wonderful hair falling a shadow about her. She stared at the reflection hard and questioningly.

”I suppose,” her voice was pathos itself in its helplessness, ”it is because what you once told me about being pretty, is true. A girl who looks like THAT,” pointing her finger at the gla.s.s, ”need not think she can earn her own living. I loathe it,” in fierce resentment at some bitter injustice. ”It is like being a person under a curse!”

At this Dowie broke down openly and let her tears run fast. ”No, no! You mustn't say it or think it, my dearie!” she wept. ”It might call down a blight on it. You a young thing like a garden flower! And someone--somewhere--G.o.d bless him--that some day'll glory in it--and you'll glory too. Somewhere he is--somewhere!”

”Let none of them look at me!” cried Robin. ”I loather them, too.

I hate everything--and everybody--but you two--just you two.”

Mademoiselle took her in her arms this time when she sobbed again.

Mademoiselle knew how at this hour it seemed to her that all her world was laid bare forever more. When the worst of the weeping was over and she lay quiet, but for the deep catching breaths which lifted her breast in slow, childish shudders at intervals, she held Mademoiselle Valle's hand and looked at her with a faint, wry smile.

”You were too kind to tell me what a stupid little fool I was when I talked to you about taking a place in an office!” she said. ”I know now that you would not have allowed me to do the things I was so sure I could do. It was only my ignorance and conceit. I can't answer advertis.e.m.e.nts. Any bad person can say what they choose in an advertis.e.m.e.nt. If that woman had advertised, she would have described Helene. And there was no Helene.” One of the shuddering catches of her breath broke in here. After it, she said, with a pitiful girlishness of regret: ”I--I could SEE Helene. I have known so few people well enough to love them. No girls at all. I though--perhaps--we should begin to LOVE each other. I can't bear to think of that--that she never was alive at all. It leaves a sort of empty place.”

When she had sufficiently recovered herself to be up again, Mademoiselle Valle said to her that she wished her to express her grat.i.tude to Lord Coombe.

”I will if you wish it,” she answered.

”Don't you feel that it is proper that you should do it? Do you not wish it yourself?” inquired Mademoiselle. Robin looked down at the carpet for some seconds.

”I know,” she at last admitted, ”that it is proper. But I don't wish to do it.”

”No?” said Mademoiselle Valle.

Robin raised her eyes from the carpet and fixed them on her.

”It is because of--reasons,” she said. ”It is part of the horror I want to forget. Even you mayn't know what it has done to me.

Perhaps I am turning into a girl with a bad mind. Bad thoughts keep swooping down on me--like great black ravens. Lord Coombe saved me, but I think hideous things about him. I heard Andrews say he was bad when I was too little to know what it meant. Now, I KNOW, I remember that HE knew because he chose to know--of his own free will. He knew that woman and she knew him. HOW did he know her?”

She took a forward step which brought her nearer to Mademoiselle.

”I never told you but I will tell you now,” she confessed, ”When the door opened and I saw him standing against the light I--I did not think he had come to save me.”

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