" There was
inexpressible bitterness in her voice. "Some day," she said, '"I
shall go there to die. That is all I have to look forward to now."
"Oh, don't!" Sylvia said, with quick feeling. "Don't, please! You
shouldn't feel like that."
Mrs. Merston's face was twisted in a painful smile. She looked
into the girl's face with a kind of cynical pity. "You will come
to it," she said. "Life isn't what it was to you even now. You're
beginning to feel the thorns under the rose-leaves. Of course you
may be lucky. You may bear children, and that will be your
salvation. But if you don't--if you don't----"
"Please!" whispered Sylvia. "Please don't say that to me!"
The words were almost inarticulate. She got up as she uttered them
and moved away. Mrs. Merston looked after her, and very strangely
her face altered. Something of that mother-love in her which had
so long been cheated showed in her lustreless eyes.
"Oh, poor child!" she said. "I am sorry."
It was briefly spoken. She was ever brief in her rare moments of
emotion. But there was a throb of feeling in the words that
reached Sylvia. She turned impulsively back again.
"Thank you," she said, and there were tears in her eyes as she
spoke. "I think perhaps--" her utterance came with an effort "--my
life is--in its way--almost as difficult as yours.
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