Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/215

 I thought she would never stop saying it, on and on and on and on. "You 're alive, you 're alive, you 're alive." Like a defective phonograph disk her shattered sense caught on that one supreme phrase, "You 're alive! You 're alive! You 're alive! You 're alive!"

Then the blood that had blazed in her face spread suddenly to her nerveless hands, and she began to pluck at the crape ruffles on her gown. Stitch by stitch I heard the rip-rip-rip like the buzz of a fishing-reel. But louder than all came that maddening, monotonous cry, "You 're alive! You 're alive! You 're alive!" I thought her brain was broken.

Then the Blue Serge Man sprang toward her, and I shut my eyes. But I caught the blessed, clumsy sound of a lover's boot tripping on a ruffle—the crushing out of a breath—the smother of a half-lipped word.

I don't know what became of Alrik. I don't know what became of Alrik's Old Mother. But the Partridge Hunter, with his arm across his eyes, came groping for me through the red, red room.

"Let's get out of this," he whispered. "Let's get out of this."

So once again, amateurs both in sorrow and in gladness, the Partridge Hunter and I fled fast before the Incomprehensible. Out we ran through