She faced about, and stood opposite the elder woman.
' What am I to do?' she asked. ' He is strong, masterful; I am afraid of him, and it will take a great deal of nervous force out of me. Now, I can't spare that.'
She paused a moment.
' Perhaps I had better say straight out what I mean,' she said. ' I am having rather a hard time as it is; that I take on myself very willingly. But every day leaves me more and more tired when the need for playing up is over. But it is worth it: I should be a very feeble creature if I did not feel that. Because he is getting better, is he not?'
Mrs. Brancepeth laid her hand on Sybil.
' Every day I thank God for what you are doing,' she said, ' and I thank you; but—but I suppose I have been more sanguine than I should. Is there no chance for Charlie?'
Sybil threw her arms out with a hopeless gesture.
' I don't know—literally I don't know. I like him so much that I can't offer him only liking; and I don't know that I have anything more to offer him. It is all very difficult. I don't suppose there is a woman in the world who knows herself so badly as I do. And I used to think I was so decisive, so clear cut. What is happening to me?'
Mrs. Brancepeth looked at her with a wonderful tenderness and pity. She had often noticed how completely she was in the clutch of her temperament, how the mood of the moment completely blotted out all other landmarks and guiding-posts which experience from without and her own character from within might have been supposed to be of some directing value in perplexities. But it was not so with her; in such things she was a child, ruled by the impulse—not led by the reason, nor steered by any formed character. With her the present moment so blotted out the past that all precedents, all warnings, all points which ninety-nine grown-up people out of a hundred have to help
