Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/293

Rh without hurt—picking herself up and monotonously going on and on.

Reba did not fight for strength, struggle for peace of mind during the long convalescing days. Passive and inert, she lay and let nature do with her what it wanted to, looking on a little curiously at the queer workings of its ways, surprised as the days wore on that time was actually working on her its magic cure—making her body a little stronger every week (and with no help from her), her mind a little better able to face the truth without the old stab of pain.

But instead of the pain, Reba observed that there was nothing in her heart to take its place—nothing, that is, but a queer numbness. There was no desire there any more—no desire for anybody, for anything, she thought. She felt a strange indifference toward the pile of letters waiting for her perusal—one from Louise, one from Miss Ellsworth, two from Mamie, and two with a foreign stamp and a censor label on the back from Katherine Park. She felt a strange indifference, too, about getting well, or, once well, about how she should spend the hours of the long days.

When finally she was strong enough to be propped up in bed, and use pen and paper, so indifferent had she become that she was without a qualm of fear as to the consequences of the note she wrote. It was to Nathan. It was a brief note—all she had strength for.

She told him she was living at home again, and asked him, the next time he wrote, to address his letter to Mrs. Nathaniel Cawthorne, please. "For I am wearing your ring now," it said, "as I ought. It's