Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/401

 limbs chilly. When the maids discovered her in the morning, they fled from the house. While lassitude flowed round her, she was left alone in the isolated house, with no telephone.

All day, all night, as her throat crackled with thirst, she lay longing for some one to help her. Once she crawled to the kitchen for water. The floor of the bedroom was an endless heaving sea, the hall a writhing dimness, and by the kitchen door she dropped and lay for an hour, whimpering.

"Got to—got to—can't remember what it was," her voice kept appealing to her cloudy brain.

Aching, fighting the ache, she struggled up, wrapped about her a shabby cloak which one of the maids had abandoned in flight, and in the darkness staggered out to find help. As she came to the highway she stumbled, and lay under the hedge, unmoving, like a hurt animal. On hands and knees she crawled back into the Lodge, and between times, as her brain went dark, she nearly forgot the pain in her longing for Martin.

She was bewildered; she was lonely; she dared not start on her long journey without his hand to comfort her. She listened for him—listened—tense with listening.

"You will come! I know you'll come and help me! I know. You'll come! Martin! Sandy! Sandy!" she sobbed.

Then she slipped down into the kindly coma. There was no more pain, and all the shadowy house was quiet but for her hoarse and struggling breath.

Like Sondelius, Joyce Lanyon tried to persuade Martin to give the phage to everybody.

"I'm getting to be good and stern, with all you people after me. Regular Gottlieb. Nothing can make me do it, not if they tried to lynch me," he boasted.

He had explained Leora to Joyce.

"I don't know whether you two will like each other. You're so darn' different. You're awfully articulate, and you like these 'pretty people' that you're always talking about, but she doesn't care a hang for 'em. She sits back—oh, she never misses anything, but she never says much. Still, she's got the best instinct for honesty that I've ever known. I hope you two'll get each other. I was afraid to let her come here