neeling down, she began to disentangle a fly, imprisoned
in a cobweb. A plant of hemlock had sprung up in the long grass by her
feet. Greta thought, dismayed: 'There are weeds!'

It seemed but another sign of the death of joy.

'But it's very beautiful,' she thought, 'the blossoms are like stars. I
am not going to pull it up. I will leave it; perhaps it will spread all
through the garden; and if it does I do not care, for now things are not
like they used to be and I do not, think they ever shall be again.'

XXVII

The days went by; those long, hot days, when the heat haze swims up about
ten of the forenoon, and, as the sun sinks level with the mountains,
melts into golden ether which sets the world quivering with sparkles.

At the lighting of the stars those sparkles die, vanishing one by one off
the hillsides; evening comes flying down the valleys, and life rests
under her cool wings. The night falls; and the hundred little voices of
the night arise.

It was near grape-gathering, and in the heat the fight for Nicholas
Treffry's life went on, day in, day out, with gleams of hope and moments
of despair. Doctors came, but after the first he refused to see them.

"No," he said to Dawney--"throwing away money. If I pull through it
won't be because of them."

For days together he would allow no one but Dawney, Dominique, and the
paid nurse in the room.

"I can stand it better," he said to Christian, "when I don't see any of
you; keep away, old girl, and let me get on with it!"

To have been able to help would have eased the tension of her nerves, and
the aching of her heart. At his own request they had moved his bed into
a corner so that he might face the wall. There he would lie for hours
together, not speaking a word, except to ask for drink.

Sometimes Christian crept in unnoticed, and sat watching, with her arms
tightly folded across her breast. At night, after Greta was asleep, she
would toss from side to side, muttering feverish prayers. She spent hours
at her little table in the schoolroom, writing letters to Harz that were
never sent. Once she wrote these words: "I am the most wicked of all
creatures--I have even wished that he may die!" A few minutes afterwards
Miss Naylor found her with her head buried on her arms. Christian sprang
up; tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Don't touch me!" she cried,
and rushed away. Later, she stole into her uncle's room, and sank down
on the floor