Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/369

Rh "Oh! . . . Henri!"

He rang the bell.

"Oh! . . . Henri!" she began to sob. "I'm frightened! I'm frightened! . . ."

She felt as if she were sinking into the snow, into a fleecy, bottomless abyss. Her knees knocked together and he saw that she was giving way. He held her up and she fell against him almost swooning. . . . He rang the bell. . ..

The door was opened. It was Addie who opened the door. They entered; Constance staggered as she went. And, in her half-swooning giddiness, she seemed to see the house full of whirling snowflakes, coming through the roof, filling the passage and the rooms; and, amid this strange snow, her son's face appeared to her as the face of a ghost, very white, with the blue flame of his big eyes. . ..

At that moment there came from upstairs a wailing cry, a long-drawn-out shriek, uttered in an agony of despair; and that cry seemed to call to Constance out of Adeline's body through all that night of snow indoors and out.

"Mamma, Papa, hush! . . . Uncle Gerrit . . . Uncle Gerrit is . . . dead. . . . Uncle Gerrit has . . ."

It was snowing, before Constance' giddy eyes, as she went up the stairs, with her husband and her son; it was snowing wildly, a whirl of all-obliterating white; it was snowing all around her.