"No--not yet," she said. "The doctor said to hold out as long as I
could. Would you mind putting your hand there?"

"Not a bit," said I, and I pawed all over the foot of her bed. Finally
I got up and sat there.

"What happens now?" I asked her.

"She just moves up and sits farther out," said she.

I couldn't think of much to say to that, she was so quiet and hopeless,
so I waited awhile and finally I said,

"Would it help you any to talk about it?"

"Oh, if you didn't _mind_!" she cried out, and then the poor thing
began. It makes me tired, the way people treat a patient like that.
There was that girl just bottled up, you might as well say, because
they all thought it would make her worse to talk about it. Her father
pooh-poohed it, and her mother cried and asked her to send for their
rector, and even Dr. Stanchon slipped up there, it seemed to me, for he
advised her not to dwell on it. Not dwell on it! Why, how could she
help it, I'd like to know?

"What I can't understand," she'd say, over and over, "is her coming,
when it hurts me so. Why, Janet loved me, Miss Jessop, she loved the
ground I walked on, everybody said! And she knows--she must know--that
I wouldn't have hurt her for the world. Why should I? She took care
of me since I was six years old--sixteen years! She said to put in
those powders in the box and I put them in. How could I know?"

"Of course you couldn't know," I said, "she knows that."

"Then why does she do this?" she asked me, so pitifully, just like a
child. "Why does she, Miss Jessop?"

"Well, you know, Miss Elton," I said, "you wouldn't believe me if I
lied to you, now, would you? And so I must tell you that I don't think
she _does_ do it: none of us do. It's just your idea. If Janet's
there, why don't I see her? You're overstrained and excited and you
feel that she might not have died----"

"Ah, but I didn't feel that the night she came!" she broke out, "truly
I didn't. Dr. Stanchon and all of them said I was very brave and
sensible. He talked to me and made me see: if Janet had been sleeping
with one of the maids and waked her up and told her not to turn on the
light because it hurt her head, but just to give her the powders in the
box, that maid would have done it. I can see that."

"Of course," said I.

"I didn't blame myself--really," she went on, and suddenly she looked
straight to the foot of the bed.

"Janet," she said, "the doctor said never to sp