That night and the following day were terrible.  Lloyd neither ate nor slept.  Not once did she set foot out of her room, giving out that she was ill, which was not far from the truth, and keeping to herself and to the companionship of the thoughts and terrors that crowded her mind.  Until that day at Medford her life had run easily and happily and in well-ordered channels.  She was successful in her chosen profession and work.  She imagined herself to be stronger and of finer fibre than most other women, and her love for Bennett had lent a happiness and a sweetness to her life dear to her beyond all words.  Suddenly, and within an hour’s time, she had lost everything.  Her will had been broken, her spirit crushed; she had been forced to become fearfully instrumental in causing the death of her patient—­a man who loved and trusted her—­while her love for Bennett, which for years had been her deep and abiding joy, the one great influence of her life, was cold and dead, and could never be revived.

This in the end came to be Lloyd’s greatest grief.  She could forget that she herself had been humbled and broken.  Horrible, unspeakably horrible, as Ferriss’s death seemed to her, it was upon Bennett, and not upon her, that its responsibility must be laid.  She had done what she could.  Of that she was assured.  But, first and above all things, Lloyd was a woman, and her love for Bennett was a very different matter.

When, during that never-to-be-forgotten scene in the breakfast-room of the doctor’s house, she had warned Bennett that if he persisted in his insane resolution he would stamp out her affection for him, Lloyd had only half believed what she said.  But when at last it dawned upon her that she had spoken wiser than she knew, that this was actually true, and that now, no matter how she might desire it, she could not love him any longer, it seemed as though her heart must break.  It was precisely as though Bennett himself, the Bennett she had known, had been blotted out of existence.  It was much worse than if Bennett had merely died.  Even then he would have still existed for her, somewhere.  As it was, the man she had known simply ceased to be, irrevocably, finally, and the warmth of her love dwindled and grew cold, because now there was nothing left for it to feed upon.

Never until then had Lloyd realised how much he had been to her; how he had not only played so large a part in her life, but how he had become a very part of her life itself.  Her love for him had been like the air, like the sunlight; was delicately knitted and intertwined into all the innumerable intricacies of her life and character.  Literally, not an hour had ever passed that, directly or indirectly, he had not occupied her thoughts.  He had been her inspiration; he had made her want to be brave and strong and determined, and it was because of him that the greater things of the world interested her.  She had chosen a work to be done because he had set her an example.  So only that she preserved her womanliness, she, too, wanted to count, to help on, to have her place in the world’s progress.  In reality all her ambitions and hopes had been looking toward one end only, that she might be his equal; that he might find in her a companion and a confidante; one who could share his enthusiasms and understand his vast projects and great aims.