Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/255

243 But, as the night wore on, she became worse. I had great trouble to get her to take the inhalation. She kept up the low moaning all the time, as she had done on the first night; occasionally, too, sitting up as before, with her chin on her knees, and the lower parts of her hands turned round in her eyes. I did not leave the bed-side for a moment. Now and then she fell asleep, but the low moaning did not cease, except when she muttered incoherently.

The slow hours passed. I must have dozed. I awoke with a start. She was struggling violently, I saw that, and her swollen, livid face, and eyes strangely prominent with strange, clear brightness. Then I knew that she wanted me, and, in a moment, was across the bed, with one arm round her body and the other loosening her nightdress at the throat; but she had caught it, as it were, by chance, and rent it down wide open, just as the button was coming undone. I held her steadily up, despite her violent, downward struggles. She knew I was holding her. She could not get breath; she was suffocating. Her chest seemed rigid. I looked at her livid face again, her bright eyes, her stretched nostrils.

Then, before I scarcely knew what had happened, except a tightened effort of her body in my arms, she had ceased struggling.

I looked at her face: looked long, and at last, wildly. I shook her gently; lowered my arm to shake her again. Her head fell back with upward, staring eyes. I thought, She is dead, she is dead. What did it mean? No … No …

I gathered her close in my arms, kissing her warm, pure throat, talking to myself; and let both of us lie back in the soft pillows, I with my cheek on her warm, pure breast. Ah, better to sleep now without more words; better to sleep! Think no more of that phantasy. I was ever given to such. As a boy, I could not quite tell sometimes whether I was in a dream or awake; I could not quite tell sometimes whether I had seen things in dreams or in the vital air: So now! But that was enough of speaking. Better to sleep now without more words; better to sleep!