"taking good care" of her could result in anything but a perfect
solution of her troubles, or that there could be any future to her
condition but one of recovery. But what if she should die? A sudden
and helpless sense of his responsibility to Ruth, to HER, brought him
trembling to his feet.

He hurried to the cabin, where Mrs. Sol left him with a word of caution:
"You'll find her changed and quiet,--very quiet. If I was you, I
wouldn't say anything to bring back her old self."

The change which Rand saw was so great, the face that was turned to him
so quiet, that, with a new fear upon him, he would have preferred the
savage eyes and reckless mien of the old Mornie whom he hated. With his
habitual impulsiveness he tried to say something that should express
that fact not unkindly, but faltered, and awkwardly sank into the chair
by her bedside.

"I don't wonder you stare at me now," she said in a far-off voice. "It
seems to you strange to see me lying here so quiet. You are thinking how
wild I was when I came here that night. I must have been crazy, I think.
I dreamed that I said dreadful things to you; but you must forgive me,
and not mind it. I was crazy then." She stopped, and folded the blanket
between her thin fingers. "I didn't ask you to come here to tell you
that, or to remind you of it; but--but when I was crazy, I said so many
worse, dreadful things of HIM; and you--YOU will be left behind to tell
him of it."

Rand was vaguely murmuring something to the effect that "he knew she
didn't mean anything," that "she musn't think of it again," that "he'd
forgotten all about it," when she stopped him with a tired gesture.