you. I hate you! You are a selfish, wicked woman! I hate you!"
Elnora turned, went through the kitchen and out the back door. She followed the garden path to the gate and walked toward the swamp a short distance when reaction overtook her. She dropped on the ground and leaned against a big log. When a little child, desperate as now, she had tried to die by holding her breath. She had thought in that way to make her mother sorry, but she had learned that life was a thing thrust upon her and death would not come at her wish.
She was so crushed over the loss of that moth, which she had childishly named the Yellow Emperor, that she scarcely remembered the blow. She had thought no luck in all the world would be so rare as to complete her collection, and she just had been forced to see a splendid Imperialis crushed to a mass before her. There was a possibility that she could find another, but now she was facing the certainty that the one she might have had and with which she undoubtedly could have attracted others, was ruined—by her mother. How long she sat there Elnora did not know or care. She simply suffered in dumb, abject misery, an occasional dry sob shaking her. Aunt Margaret was right. Elnora felt that morning that her mother never would be any different. The girl had reached the place where she realized that she could bear it no longer.
As Elnora left the room, Mrs. Comstock took one step after her.
