Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/135

 thin white hair had come undone and fell about her shoulders. A sickly smell of medicine hung about her.

Olivia touched her gently and said, "What have you lost, Mrs. Pentland? Can I help you?"

The old woman turned and, throwing the light of the torch full into Olivia's face, stared at her with the round blue eyes, murmuring, "Oh, it's you, Olivia. Then it's all right. Perhaps you can help me."

"What was it you lost? We might look for it in the morning."

"I've forgotten what it was now. You startled me, and you know my poor brain isn't very good, at best. It never has been since I married." Sharply she looked at Olivia. "It didn't affect you that way, did it? You don't ever drift away and feel yourself growing dimmer and dimmer, do you? It's odd. Perhaps it's different with your husband."

Olivia saw that the old woman was having one of those isolated moments of clarity and reason which were more horrible than her insanity because for a time she made you see that, after all, she was like yourself, human and capable of thought. To Olivia these moments were almost as if she witnessed the rising of the dead.

"No," said Olivia. "Perhaps if we went to bed now, you'd remember in the morning."

Old Mrs. Pentland shook her head violently. "No, no, I must find them now. It may be all different in the morning and I won't know anything and that Irish woman won't let me out. Say over the names of a few things like prunes, prisms, persimmons. That's what Mr. Dickens used to have his children do when he couldn't think of a word."

"Let me have the light," said Olivia; "perhaps I can find what it is you want."

With the meekness of a child, the old woman gave her the electric torch and Olivia, turning it this way and that, among