The revelation came to Clare like a lightning−flash: it was precisely because Margaret had died that she was important to her. She knew exactly how she had died. More than that, Clare knew why Margaret had failed to live as he had designed her to live. In a symbolic sense, Margaret had lived in Clare's dream−haunted delirium; but not for him; rather in rebellion against him. She had not been reborn as his slave because she refused— 'at the last moment,' he had said himself—the submission he demanded. She had resisted in her heart. She had refused to give her heart to animate Niall's image of her. Rebellion was possible—as possible as it was right: Clare had known that deep in her heart all the time, and her knowledge of that fact, clothed by dream imagination in the figure of Margaret Raines, had warred in the darkness of the last three days against Niall's spell. And it had won! Exultantly, Clare gazed about the room, drawing a deep breath of the air of this world. Rebellion had won.
Then her triumphant gaze fell on a sleeping figure in the cot furthest from her. She had exulted too soon. Jennifer lay there, and Jennifer had yielded complete obedience to him. She lay there, alive still, but already in bondage to him, merely abiding the time until he should beckon her into his world. Looking round and listening to make sure that neither the Matron nor her assistant was at hand, Clare slipped out of bed and up to Jennifer's cot. It did not occur to her until she was nearly there that she should have been too ill to walk. She was weak and tired, but she did not feel ill any longer: there was an intense excitement coursing through all her body which nerved her and convinced her of her power to move as she wished and do what she would.
She gave Jennifer one searching look and then regained her own bed. The younger girl was sleeping peacefully. The only change in her that might have been taken for a sign of illness was a flush of heightened colour in her cheeks. She slept with her lips slightly curved in a smile, the picture of utter content and peace. Niall had kept his promise there: Jennifer's few days would be passed in tranquillity. “A few days”—the phrase sounded over and over again in Clare's mind. How many did he mean? Three days had, already passed; the puppets must be almost finished now. He would have worked day and night in his eagerness; she could see him bending over his bench in intense concentration, his skilled fingers working with such certainty and speed, see him opening the press again, looking at those little tubes, preparing for the last task of all, the final task of animation that would be done by his power over the drops of blood that she and Jennifer had freely given. Clare's victory over his spell was illusory: she had won only the briefest respite, and that at a cost of bodily and mental suffering that might all have been avoided, might all have been changed to such peace as Jennifer was now wrapped in if she would have but yielded to him. Now she had only until the moment when he came to place the hearts in his puppets. She found herself speculating whether she would feel it, here, in her bed in the Sanatorium; whether he would do it brutally to punish her for her rebellion, or whether he would be merciful in the end and let her sleep through the change. She wondered which of them he would take first.
She did not know how long a respite she might yet be given: but she could take no chance of its being longer than another day. What could be done must be done this night.
The doctor came in the middle of the morning, and Clare, suppressing her excitement and masking her anxiety for action with assumed listlessness, suffered his examination obediently, smiled wanly at his pleasantries and received his verdict that she was not to get up for another two weeks with an indifference that somewhat disconcerted him. She watched keenly when he passed on from her and stood, with the Matron, looking down at Jennifer. His face was not visible to her when he made his examination. Jennifer still slept, and his visit was brief; Clare wished she could have heard his conversation with the Matron just outside the Sanatorium door.
A little before luncheon, Miss Geary came to see Clare. She spoke regretfully about the scholarship examination, then rather diffidently mentioned the question of letting Clare's parents know about her illness. Clare answered that she was well enough to write herself and would write to her mother the next day. As for the examination she had to grope back in her memory some way to find what she thought and felt about that. It was to take place a few days after the end of the Easter term: but for a long time now she had not believed in it; it had not seemed possible to her that she would ever take it; something so much more powerful had interposed. She listened nevertheless to Miss Geary's kindly efforts to console her, and to her suggestions that perhaps the chance was not entirely lost, that Clare might be able to continue studying at home when her father came to England and settled down. After all, Clare had a year in hand, she was only eighteen. It might even be better to take the examination when she was older....
“Yes,” said Clare. “I have remembered what you said about our duty to grow old.”
Miss Geary left her when the Under−matron brought her lunch, and promised to come and see her again in the evening. Clare ate heartily at luncheon, tea and supper, but the hours between dragged intolerably slowly. The only event of that interminable afternoon was that Jennifer woke.
Clare had been reading, and, lifting her eyes casually from the book she saw that Jennifer was sitting up apparently looking out of the window. She called to her, and Jennifer turned her head. The same slight smile she had worn when she slept still curved her lips. She replied with a single 'Hello,' spoken softly, in a slow, dreamy voice, and her expression did not change. Clare got up and went over to her. Jennifer did not move; she smiled and looked at Clare, but did not answer again when she spoke to her. Clare stared into her eyes: they were wide open but, if they saw anything, the images they received could convey nothing to the brain behind; their blue was of a peculiar dark intensity, which, combined with the high colour of her rounded cheeks and the soft smiling of her parted lips, gave her an appearance of fresh, vital beauty that was like a vivid and premature flowering far exceeding the promise that had been in the bud of her natural childish prettiness. Troubled and frightened, Clare drew away from her, and saw her after a while lie down again, with a gentle, contented sigh, and fall asleep.
That strange, new−flowering beauty in Jennifer's face wrought Clare's anxiety to an unbearable pitch: she believed it to be proof that Niall's work was on the point of completion. At any moment now he might begin, bending there over the bench in the ancient house behind the oak wood, to fill the little cavities in the breasts of his dolls. She pressed her hands to her own heart as if she felt the mortal change beginning there.
When Miss Geary came before supper, she told her of Jennifer's awakening, striving to depict her impression with an earnestness that came near to betraying all her fear. She wished bitterly that she could now tell the whole story to Miss Geary. But it was too late: even if she could make her, or anyone, believe her, the explanations, would be too long and complicated, and before anyone could act after she had at last convinced them, Niall's work would be done. Likelier by far, they would simply take her words for lightheaded ramblings: the doctor would find it so easy to diagnose her complaint as a nervous breakdown through overwork and anxiety about the examination. The only result would be that they would take precautions to stop her doing the one thing that might yet defeat Niall.