It was the end of what she had been intending, but it left him
thinking only of that.
"Well, you don't say--?"
She had touched in her passage a bell near the chimney and had sunk
back strangely pale. "I'm afraid I'm too ill."
"Too ill to tell me?" it sprang up sharp to him, and almost to his
lips, the fear she might die without giving him light. He checked
himself in time from so expressing his question, but she answered
as if she had heard the words.
"Don't you know--now?"
"'Now' -?" She had spoken as if some difference had been made
within the moment. But her maid, quickly obedient to her bell, was
already with them. "I know nothing." And he was afterwards to say
to himself that he must have spoken with odious impatience, such an
impatience as to show that, supremely disconcerted, he washed his
hands of the whole question.
"Oh!" said May Bartram.
"Are you in pain?" he asked as the woman went to her.
"No," said May Bartram.
Her maid, who had put an arm round her as if to take her to her
room, fixed on him eyes that appealingly contradicted her; in spite
of which, however, he showed once more his mystification.
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