Mrs. Haldin, she told me, had not shed a tear. She was sitting up in
bed, and her immobility, her silence, were very alarming. At last she
lay down gently and had motioned her daughter away.
"She will call me in presently," added Miss Haldin. "I left a bell near
the bed."
I confess that my very real sympathy had no standpoint. The Western
readers for whom this story is written will understand what I mean. It
was, if I may say so, the want of experience. Death is a remorseless
spoliator. The anguish of irreparable loss is familiar to us all. There
is no life so lonely as to be safe against that experience. But the
grief I had brought to these two ladies had gruesome associations. It
had the associations of bombs and gallows--a lurid, Russian colouring
which made the complexion of my sympathy uncertain.
I was grateful to Miss Haldin for not embarrassing me by an outward
display of deep feeling. I admired her for that wonderful command
over herself, even while I was a little frightened at it. It was the
stillness of a great tension. What if it should suddenly snap? Even the
door of Mrs. Haldin's room, with the old mother alone in there, had a
rather awful aspect.
Nathalie Haldin murmured sadly--
"I suppose you are wondering what my feelings are?"
Essentially that was true.
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