y, to those of us who champed at the
bit, that Miss Somers was fading away, but not peacefully; she was
better unvisited, unseen. Miss Somers did not wish any one to come, and
the nurse thought it wiser not to force her. Several women were held
back by that, and turned with relief to Lenten opera. The opera,
however, said little to Withrow at the best of times, and he was crazed
by the notion of not seeing her before she achieved extinction. I
thought him unwise, for many reasons: for one, I did not think that
Arnold Withrow would bring her peace. She usually knew what she
wanted--wasn't that, indeed, the whole trouble with her?--and she had
said explicitly to the nurse that she didn't want Arnold Withrow. But by
the end of May Withrow was neither to hold nor to bind: he went. I
contented myself with begging him at least not to poison her last hours
by admiring the landscape. I had expected my earnest request to shock
him; but, to my surprise, he nodded understandingly. "I shall curse the
whole thing out like a trooper, if she gives me the chance." And he got
into his daycoach--the Pullmans wouldn't go on until much later--a
mistaken and passionate knight.

Withrow could not see her the first evening, and he talked long and
deeply with the nurse. She had no hope to give him: she was mystified.
It was her opinion that Kathleen Somers's lack of will was killing her,
speedily and surely. "Is there anything for her to die of?" he asked.
"There's nothing, you might say, for her to _live_ of," was her reply.
The nurse disapproved of his coming, but promised to break the news of
his presence to her patient in the morning.

Spring had by this time touched the hills. It was that divine first
moment when the whole of earth seems to take a leap in the night; when
things are literally new every morning. Arnold walked abroad late,
filling his lungs and nostrils and subduing his pulses. He was always
faunishly wild in the spring; and for years he hadn't had a chance to
seek the season in her haunts. But he turned in before midnight, because
he dreaded the next day supremely. He didn't want to meet that face to
face until he had to. Melora Meigs lowered like a thunderstorm, but she
was held in check by the nurse. I suppose Melora couldn't give notice:
there would be nothing but the poor-farm for her if she did. But she
whined and grumbled and behaved in general like an electrical
disturbance. Luckily, she couldn't curdle the milk.