Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/357

Rh flame of a gas-jet. . . and yet. . . and yet it's getting dark. . . ."

"Gerrit, my Gerrit, is the fever returning? Would you like to go to bed?"

"Yes, Line, I want to go to bed. . . . Put your baby to bed, Line . . . it's tired, it's not well. Put it to bed, Line, and tuck the nice, warm clothes round its cold back . . . and promise to stay and sit with it . . . till it's asleep . . . till it's asleep. . . . Put it to bed, Line. . . . And, Line, if your baby . . . if your baby dies . . . if it dies . . . will you promise never . . . to think . . . that it did not love you . . . as much as it ought to? . . ."

She had gently forced him to rise from his chair and she opened the partition-door. He stood in the middle of the little room while she busied herself in the bedroom and lit the gas and then came back for him and helped him undress.

"It's getting dark . . . it's getting dark," he muttered, shivering, while his teeth chattered with the cold.

And he felt that it was not the cold of fever, but a cold in his veins and his spine, because the beast had sucked all his blood and marrow with its voluptuous licks, had eaten him up from the days of his childhood, had devoured him until now, in the twilight, his soul shrank and withered in his body, which had no more sap to feed it. . ..

"It's getting dark," he muttered.