She was there--he saw her at
once. But Bella hadn't put a fresh nightgown on her, and the sheets
were disordered and unchanged.
Lemuel took a step forward; then he stopped. "The fever's gone," he
vainly told the dread freezing about his heart at a stilled white face.
"Yes," he repeated with numb lips; "it's gone."
He approached the bed and standing over it and the meager body he
cursed softly and wonderingly. The light was failing and it veiled the
sharp lines of the dead child's countenance. For a moment his gaze
strayed about the room and he felt a swift sorrow at its ugliness. He
had wanted pretty things, pictures and a bright carpet and ribbons, for
Flavilla. Then he was conscious of a tearing rage, but now he was
unmindful of it, impervious to its assault in the fixed necessity of
the present.
Later----
He was sitting again on his porch, after the momentary morbid stir of
curiosity and small funeral, when the unrestrained sweep of his own
emotion overcame him. His appearance had not changed; it was impossible
for his expression to become bleaker; but there was a tremendous change
within. Yet it was not strange; rather he had the sensation of
returning to an old familiar condition. There he was at ease; he moved
swiftly, surely forward in the realization of what lay ahead.
Bella and June Bowman had left the house almost directly after him, and
Markley, finding it empty, with no response to his repeated knocking,
had turned away, being as usual both impatient and hurried.
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