Something made me speak; something made me ask if she were not quite so well as usual, and something made her reply with the dreadful truth that the doctor had given her just two months more to live. My fright and mad anguish stupefied me; for I was not prepared for this, no, not at all;--and unconsciously I stared down at the bowl I held, unable to breathe or move or even to meet her look."As usual she misinterpreted my emotion.
"'Why do you stand like that?' I heard her say in a tone of great irritation. 'And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think Imean to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I tell you that I would rot above ground rather than enter it before she did?'
"I had believed I knew this woman; but what soul ever knows another's? What soul ever knows itself?
"'Bella!' I cried; the first time I had ever presumed to address her so intimately. 'Would you poison the girl?' And from sheer weakness my fingers lost their clutch, and the bowl fell to the floor, breaking into a dozen pieces.
For a minute she stared down at these from over her tray, and then she remarked very low and very quietly:
"'Another bowl, Humphrey, and fresh curds from the kitchen. Iwill do the seasoning. The doses are too small to be skipped. You won't?'--I had shaken my head--'But you will! It will not be the first time you have gone down the hall with this mixture.'
"'But that was before I knew--' I began.
"'And now that you do, you will go just the same.' Then as Istood hesitating, a thousand memories overwhelming me in an instant, she added in a voice to tear the heart, 'Do not make me hate the only being left in this world who understands and loves me.'
She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word 'love' fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins, and all the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my heart, and make me young again. What if her thoughts were dark and her wishes murderous! She was born to rule and sway men to her will even to their own undoing."'I wish I might kiss your hand,' was what I murmured, gazing at her white fingers groping over her tray.
"'You may,' she answered, and hell became heaven to me for a brief instant. Then I lifted myself and went obediently about my task.
"But puppet though I was, I was not utterly without sympathy.
When I entered Helena's room and saw how her startled eyes fell shrinkingly on the bowl I set down before her, my conscience leaped to life and I could not help saying:
"Don't you like the curds, Helena? Your brother used to love them very much.""'His were--'
"'What, Helena?'
"'What these are not,' she murmured.
"I stared at her, terror-stricken. So she knew, and yet did not seize the bowl and empty it out of the window! Instead, her hand moved slowly towards it and drew it into place before her.
"'Yet I must eat,' she said, lifting her eyes to mine in a sort of patient despair, which yet was without accusation.
"But my hand had instinctively gone to hers and grasped it.
"'Why must you eat it?' I asked. 'If--if you do not find it wholesome, why do you touch it?'
"'Because my step-mother expects me to,' she cried, 'and I have no other will than hers. When I was a little, little child, my father made me promise that if I ever came to live with her Iwould obey her simplest wish. And I always have. I will not disappoint the trust he put in me.'
"'Even if you die of it?'
"I do not know whether I whispered these words or only thought them. She answered as though I had spoken.
"'I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live. She may ask me some day to do something I feel to be wrong.'
"When I fled down the hall that night, I heard one of the small clocks speak to me. Tell! it cried, tell! tell! tell! tell! Irushed away from it with beaded forehead and rising hair.
