Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/178

 with every misstep. She closed her eyes not to see that strained, white face, and saw it plainer in the dark. Her thoughts were all a confused pain, an incoherent revolt at the cruelty of it, the helplessness; for what could she do? Even she, who cared for him so—ah, how she cared!-what could she— Her hand jumped to her heart and clutched rigidly there; her breath went, and she gasped like the drowning man under the last sucking breaker; her strength left in a great sickening ebb, and she grasped the bedpost with all her might.

"No, no! Oh, no, no!" she cried weakly. "Oh, no!" She felt her way to the bed and dropped on it, utterly unconscious that she had moved since that wave of desolation broke on her. She seemed to have been standing by the bedpost, grasping it hard and thinking there, for years.

She saw him as he had come to her