"You know I've done nothing," he said. "I wish there were something I
really could do for you. Isn't there? Wouldn't you like to have an
English doctor prescribe for your headache? I know a splendid one. He'd
cure you in an hour."
"I must try to cure myself," Mary said. "I shall be better soon. I must
be! There's nothing more you can do, thank you very much. Unless----"
"Unless what?" He caught her up more quickly than he usually spoke.
"Now I've come back, I can hardly bear to go indoors after all. I feel
as if I couldn't breathe in a warm room, with curtains over the windows.
Would you take me on the terrace? I think I should like just to sit on
one of the seats there for a few minutes; and afterward maybe I shall be
more ready to go in."
"Come, then," was the brief answer that was somehow comforting to Mary.
She began consciously to realize that this man's calm presence helped
her. She was grateful, and at the same time smitten with remorse for the
faint physical repulsion against him she had never until now quite lost.
At this moment she believed that it was entirely gone, and could never
return; but she felt that she ought to atone in some way because it had
once existed. She took his arm again, of her own accord, and leaned
on it with a touch that expressed what she dimly meant to
express--confidence in him.
They went down the flight of steps at the end of the Casino, and so to
the terrace, which was completely deserted, as Mary had hoped it would
be.
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