“Oh, I know I’m a pig, dear, am I not?” she exclaimed. “Spoiling your holiday. But I couldn’t help it, dear, indeed I could not.”
“My dear Lou!” cried Olive in tragic contralto, “Don’t refrain for my sake. The bargain’s made; we can’t help what’s in the bundle.”
The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All the time Helena’s heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
“Promise me,” she had said, “if ever I were sick and wanted you, you would come to me.”
“I would come to you from hell!” Siegmund had replied.
“And if you were ill—you would let me come to you?” she had added.
“I promise,” he answered.
Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did what it could.
That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena’s life. In it there is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of suspense.
Towards six o’clock she alighted at Surbiton Station,
