MRS. RADER HAS A WORD TO SAY
spoken was accepted between them. "You weren't like this then!" she said.
"Down-stairs? I was."
She shook her head. "You were so strange! All last night, all to-day, I had been afraid that something had happened to you." She jerked out the words in rapid, breathless sentences. "Because, last night, we were to go out to the Witch's Spindle; and I knew something must have happened, or you wouldn't have stayed away. Then, when I saw you—and your head hurt—I knew, of course! And I would have come to you, but you frightened me, you looked so angry. I couldn't understand it; and when you came into the sewing-room, as though you thought I did not hear you, and sat there looking at me so hard, I didn't know—I couldn't think what I had done, but it seemed to me I had done you some injury, some cruel injury! And when you—"
"Never mind that," Carron said gently. For a moment, instead of the girl's face before him, he saw the head of the Sphinx. It rose to his mind like a sign of his failure and his delay. It spoke to him of necessities of times and ways, and haste. He let it sink back beneath memory to await its time.
"Is your head badly hurt?" she asked in a half voice, and he felt five soft, round finger-tips exploring in his hair.
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