I told
you that lie, too. Indeed, it is the first I ever did tell you.

"Well, I don't think there is much more to say. Oliver, my dear,
good-bye. I send you my love with all my heart.

"MABEL."

* * * * *

She sat still when she had read it through, and her eyes were still wet
with tears. Yet it was all perfectly true. She was far happier than she
could be if she had still the prospect of going back. Life seemed
entirely blank: death was so obvious an escape; her soul ached for it,
as a body for sleep.

She directed the envelope, still with a perfectly steady hand, laid it
on the table, and leaned back once more, glancing again at her untasted
breakfast.

Then she suddenly began to think of her conversation with Mr. Francis;
and, by a strange association of ideas, remembered the fall of the volor
in Brighton, the busy-ness of the priest, and the Euthanasia boxes....

When Sister Anne came in a few minutes later, she was astonished at what
she saw. The girl crouched at the window, her hands on the sill, staring
out at the sky in an attitude of unmistakable horror.

Sister Anne came across the room quickly, setting down something on the
table as she passed. She touched the girl on the shoulder.

"My dear, what is it?"

There was a long sobbing breath, and Mabel turned, rising as she turned,
and clutched the nurse with one shaking hand, pointing out with the
other.

"There!" she said. "There--look!"

"Well, my dear, what is it? I see nothing. It is a little dark!"

"Dark!" said the other. "You call that dark! Why, why, it is
black--black!"

The nurse drew her softly backwards to the chair, turning her from the
window. She recognised nervous fear; but no more than that. But Mabel
tore herself free, and wheeled again.

"You call that a little dark," she said. "Why, look, sister, look!"

Yet there was nothing remarkable to be seen. In front rose up the
feathery hand of an elm, then the shuttered windows across the court,
the roof, and above that the morning sky, a little heavy and dusky as
before a storm; but no more than that.

"Well, what is it, my dear? What do you see?"

"Why, why ... look! look!--There, listen to that."

A faint far-away rumble sounded as the rolling of a waggon--so faint
that it might almost be an aural delusion. But the girl's hands were at
her ears, and her face was one white wide-eyed mask of terror. The nurse
threw her arms round her.

"My dear," she said, "you are not yo