It was true enough, he would not forgive her because he could not forgive himself.
She thought that she heard him give a faint sigh and she shot a rapid glance at him.
A sudden thought struck her and it took her breath away. She only just refrained from giving a cry.
Was it what they called - a broken heart - that he suffered from?
XLVIII
ALL the next day Kitty thought of the convent; and the morning after, early, soon after Walter had gone, taking the amah with her to get chairs, she crossed the river.
It was barely day and the Chinese crowding the ferry boat, some in the blue cotton of the peasant, others in the black robes of respectability, had a strange look of the dead being borne over the water to the land of shadow.
And when they stepped ashore they stood for a little at the landing-place uncertainly as though they did not quite know where to go, before desultorily, in twos and threes, they wandered up the hill.
At that hour the streets of the city were very empty so that more than ever it seemed a city of the dead.
The passers-by had an abstracted air so that you might almost have thought them ghosts.
The sky was unclouded and the early sun shed a heavenly mildness on the scene; it was difficult to imagine, on that blithe, fresh, and smiling morn, that the city lay gasping, like a man whose life is being throttled out of him by a maniac's hands, in the dark clutch of the pestilence.
It was incredible that nature (the blue of the sky was clear like a child's heart) should be so indifferent when men were writhing in agony and going to their death in fear.
When the chairs were set down at the convent door a beggar arose from the ground and asked Kitty for alms.
He was clad in faded and shapeless rags that looked as though he had raked them out of a muck-heap, and through their rents you saw his skin hard and rough and tanned like the hide of a goat; his bare legs were emaciated, and his head, with its shock of coarse grey hair (the cheeks hollow, the eyes wild) was the head of a madman.
Kitty turned from him in frightened horror, and the chair-bearers in gruff tones bade him begone, but he was importunate, and to be rid of him, shuddering, Kitty gave him a few cash.
The door was opened and the amah explained that Kitty wished to see the Mother Superior.
She was taken once more into the stiff parlour in which it seemed a window had never been opened, and here she sat so long that she began to think her message had not been delivered.
At last the Mother Superior came in.
"I must ask you to excuse me for keeping you waiting," she said. "I did not expect you and I was occupied."
"Forgive me for troubling you.
I am afraid I have come at an inconvenient moment."
The Mother Superior gave her a smile, austere but sweet, and begged her to sit down.
But Kitty saw that her eyes were swollen. She had been weeping.
Kitty was startled, for she had received from the Mother Superior the impression that she was a woman whom earthly troubles could not greatly move.
"I am afraid something has happened," she faltered. "Would you like me to go away?
I can come another time."
"No, no.
Tell me what I can do for you.
It is only - only that one of our Sisters died last night." Her voice lost its even tone and her eyes filled with tears. "It is wicked of me to grieve, for I know that her good and simple soul has flown straight to heaven; she was a saint; but it is difficult always to control one's weakness.
I am afraid I am not always very reasonable."
"I'm so sorry, I'm so dreadfully sorry," said Kitty. Her ready sympathy brought a sob into her voice.
"She was one of the Sisters who came out from France with me ten years ago.
There are only three of us left now.
I remember, we stood in a little group at the end of the boat (what do you call it, the bow?) and as we steamed out of the harbour at Marseilles and we saw the golden figure of Sainte-Marie la Grace, we said a prayer together.
It had been my greatest wish since I entered religion to be allowed to come to China, but when I saw the land grow distant I could not prevent myself from weeping.
I was their Superior; it was not a very good example I was giving my daughters.
And then Sister St Francis Xavier - that is the name of the Sister who died last night - took my hand and told me not to grieve; for wherever we were, she said, there was France and there was God."
That severe and handsome face was distorted by the grief which human nature wrung from her and by the effort to restrain the tears which her reason and her faith refused.
Kitty looked away.
She felt that it was indecent to peer into that struggle.
"I have been writing to her father.
She, like me, was her mother's only daughter.
They were fisher folk in Brittany, and it will be hard for them.
Oh, when will this terrible epidemic cease?
Two of our girls have been attacked this morning and nothing but a miracle can save them.
These Chinese have no resistance.
The loss of Sister St Francis is very severe.
There is so much to do and now fewer than ever to do it.
We have Sisters at our other houses in China who are eager to come, all our Order, I think, would give anything in the world (only they have nothing) to come here; but it is almost certain death; and so long as we can manage with the Sisters we have I am unwilling that others should be sacrificed."
"That encourages me, ma mere", said Kitty. "I have been feeling that I had come at a very unfortunate moment.