Thank God, I was able to turn you back. Go home, Miss Bawn, and come
here no more."
"And what are you going to do, Nora?" I asked.
"Is it me, Miss Bawn? Sure, I'll stay where I am. I've been in and out
with them; and if I'm to get it, I'll get it. Ask some one to take the
children away. Then I'll be able to help with the nursing. Maybe 'tis
what God meant for me."
We stood and looked at each other across the space. Why, it was what I
had desired, that my face should be marred, so that Richard Dawson would
turn away from me in disgust. For a moment I had an impulse to cross the
line she had set for me, to go as she had gone into infected places.
Perhaps she read the thought in my face, for she cried out to me to go
away, to remember those who depended on me for happiness and go. She
wrung her hands when I did not go.
"Go away, for God's sake," she cried again, "and don't have the face
_he_ cares about destroyed with the small-pox! See now, Miss Bawn,
darling, what would his Lordship and her Ladyship do without you?"
But while she coaxed me with their names I could see that she dreaded
the small-pox for me lest my face should be spoilt for Richard Dawson,
and I thought it one of the greatest things I had known in the heart of
a woman.
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