"I suppose," said Jane, "it _is_ easier--not to see him."

At that Kitty clenched her hands.

"Easier?" she cried. "I'd give my soul to see him for one minute--one
minute, Janey."

She turned, stifling her sobs on her pillow. They ceased, and the
passion that was in her had its way then. She lay on her face,
convulsed, biting into the pillow; gripping the sheets, tearing at them
and wringing them in her hands. Her whole body writhed, shaken and
tormented.

"Oh, go away!" she cried. "Go away. Don't look at me!"

But Jane did not go. She stood there by the bedside.

She had come to the end of her adventure. It was as if she had been
brought there blindfold, carried past the border into the terrible,
alien, unpenetrated lands. Her genius for exploration had never taken
her within reasonable distance of them. She had turned back when the
frontier was in sight, refusing all knowledge of the things that lay
beyond. And here she was, in the very thick of it, at the heart of the
unexplored, with her poor terrified eyes uncovered, her face held close
to the thing she feared. And yet she had passed through the initiation
without terror; she had held her hand in the strange fire and it had not
hurt her. She felt only a great penetrating, comprehending,
incorruptible pity for her sister who writhed there, consumed and
tortured in the flame.

She knelt by the bedside and stretched out her arm and covered her, and
Kitty lay still.

"You haven't gone?" she said.

"No, Kitty."

Kitty moved; she sat up and put her hands to her loosened hair.

"I'll see him now," she said.

Kitty slid her feet to the floor. She stood up, steadying herself by the
bedside.

Jane looked at her, and her heart was wrung with compassion.

"No," she said, "wait till you're better. I'll tell him."

But Kitty was before her at the door, leaning against it.

"I shall never be better," she said. Her smile was ghastly. She turned
to Jane on the open threshold. "He hasn't got the children with him, has
he? I don't want to see them."

"You won't see them."

"Can't he come to me?"

She peered down the passage and drew back, and Jane knew that she was
afraid of being seen.

"There's nobody about," she said, "they're all in the dining-room."

Still Kitty hesitated.

"Will you come with me?" she said.

Then Jane took her hand and led her to the room where Robert was, and
left her with him.

He stood by the hearth, waiting for her. His h