But Leila had been through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it to the girl’s lips until she drank.  It was excellent champagne, and, since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect.  Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks.  And suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion.  With her short hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt down, stroking her head, and saying:  “There, there; my love!  There, there!”

At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair of the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a wild look.  She withdrew herself from Leila’s touch, and, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, said: 

“I can’t bear it; I can’t sleep.  I want him back; I hate life—­I hate the world.  We hadn’t done anything—­only just loved each other.  God likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one day to love each other—­only one day—­only one!”

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.