Page:Restless Earth.djvu/190

But—it just happened, my dear. Moon-madness, that’s all it was. Moon-madness.”

She sat silent for a moment, the pressure of Grace’s thin fingers around her own seeming an accusation rather than a gesture of sympathy. She rose to her feet with a cry of distress.

“Oh, what have I done?” she cried, clenching her hands together. “What have I done?”

Often she had cried thus in the seclusion of her room, but now Grace’s magnanimity and helplessness wrung the words from her afresh.

Grace reached out and grasped Patricia’s skirt.

“Won’t you take Jimmy, my dear, if I ask you to?” she pleaded. “If I ask you to save him from himself? From—from slavery?”

“No!” answered Patricia almost fiercely, as she wrenched herself free and fled the room.

Grace Harley turned her face to the sun again and lay still. Her heart was singing, and the dark years ahead seemed less terrifying.

****

Patricia came back presently with the morning tea-tray. She set it down upon a chair beside the bed, propped Grace into a sitting position with extra pillows, and placed a cup in her hands.

She had recovered her composure, and was now the cheerful and attentive person which she had become during these latter weeks.

“Try a meringue,” she invited, placing a plate of the dainties in Grace’s lap. “I won’t guarantee them, but they’re the best I could do. I’m afraid I’ll never be a cook.”

“You have made wonderful strides, I think, Pat,” declared Grace, fumbling for the plate. “I think you must be a good all-rounder.”

Patricia laughed softly and scornfully. She said nothing. She took her own cup to the window, where she turned over the wet correspondence between sips.