What would have happened to her there if she had been discovered by
Tussie I do not know, but I imagine it would have been something bad.
She was saved, however, by his being in bed, clutched by the throat by
a violent cold; and there he lay helpless, burning and shivering and
throbbing, the pains of his body increased a hundredfold by the
distraction of his mind about Priscilla. Why, Tussie asked himself
over and over again, had she looked so strange the night before? Why
had she gone starving to bed? What was she doing to-day? Was the
kitchenmaid taking proper care of her? Was she keeping warm and dry
this shocking weather? Had she slept comfortably the first night in
her little home? Poor Tussie. It is a grievous thing to love any one
too much; a grievous, wasteful, paralyzing thing; a tumbling of the
universe out of focus, a bringing of the whole world down to the mean
level of one desire, a shutting out of wider, more beautiful feelings,
a wrapping of one's self in a thick garment of selfishness, outside
which all the dear, tender, modest, everyday affections and
friendships, the wholesome, ordinary loves, the precious loves of use
and wont, are left to shiver and grow cold.
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