Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/284

252 grown and grown, and made riot in his imagination until every tiny ill to which she became subject developed into a possible monster of evil. One day a spark from the grate had caught in her dress and burned it. When he came from his lessons she laughingly told him of it, and for days after he had been almost afraid to go into that same room to look for her, lest he should find that a second spark had accomplished more ghastly results. Again, an irritation in her throat had produced a violent fit of coughing, and he had seen a speck of blood upon her handkerchief. Thereupon the horror took a new form, and for weeks he endured the agony of a new suspense. His bedroom was just across the passage from hers, and she, dreaming one night, had called out in her sleep. Wakened by her voice, he had rushed to her, only to find her lying white and peaceful. But the sight had so suggested that other "dreamless sleep," that, awe-stricken, he had fled back to his own room, where he had locked himself in and sobbed the night away. And after this for many weeks, in spite of her entreaties, he closed his door at night and refused her the solace of calling across to him, as was her wont, until she fell asleep—for Judy disliked solitude and the dark. But his moist pillow had the same story to tell every morning.

And Judy never knew.

It was his one secret from her. He found it easier to be misunderstood, than to put the horror in words, and chose rather to appear hard and sullen to her than to yield to it in her presence.

So it happened that on a particular day of this particular October, coming into her room and finding her lying on her bed, pale and weak, his heart suddenly leaped to his thoatthroat [sic] in an agony of suffering, but he only said:

"I cannot think why you lie about such a fine day, Judy. You would be much better out of doors."

Rh