Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it.  The voice, uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on: 

“I won’t—­I don’t want to live.  If there’s another life, I shall go to him.  And if there isn’t—­it’s just sleep.”

Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings.  Like most women who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox; or rather never speculated on such things.

“Tell me about yourself and him,” she said.

Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin.  “We loved each other; and children are born, aren’t they, after you’ve loved?  But mine won’t be!” From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again.  Nonsense!  But—­what an awful thing, if true!  That which had always seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life—­why! now, it was a tragedy!  Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the girl.

“My poor dear!” she said; “you’re fancying things!”

The colour had faded out of Noel’s face, and, with her head thrown back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.

“If it is—­I shan’t live.  I don’t mean to—­it’s easy to die.  I don’t mean Daddy to know.”

“Oh! my dear, my dear!” was all Leila could stammer.

“Was it wrong, Leila?”

“Wrong?  I don’t know—­wrong?  If it really is so—­it was—­unfortunate.  But surely, surely—­you’re mistaken?”

Noel shook her head.  “I did it so that we should belong to each other. 
Nothing could have taken him from me.”

Leila caught at the girl’s words.

“Then, my dear—­he hasn’t quite gone from you, you see?”

Noel’s lips formed a “No” which was inaudible.  “But Daddy!” she whispered.

Edward’s face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the girl for the tortured shape of it.  Then the hedonist in her revolted against that ascetic vision.  Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life and love, snatched out of the jaws of death.  “Need he ever know?” she said.

“I could never lie to Daddy.  But it doesn’t matter.  Why should one go on living, when life is rotten?”

Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October.  Leila got up from her knees.  She stood at the window thinking hard.

“My dear,” she said at last, “you mustn’t get morbid.  Look at me!  I’ve had two husbands, and—­and—­well, a pretty stormy up and down time of it; and I daresay I’ve got lots of trouble before me.  But I’m not going to cave in.  Nor must you.  The Piersons have plenty of pluck; you mustn’t be a traitor to your blood.  That’s the last thing.  Your boy would have told you to stick it.  These are your ‘trenches,’ and you’re not going to be downed, are you?”