ultitude of dim faces gathering together out
of the darkness and watching the two people in the room. Never before had
he seen so many of the Watchers of the Living. A multitude had eyes only
for the sufferer in the room, another multitude, in infinite anguish,
watched the woman as she hunted with greedy eyes for something she could
not find. They crowded about Plattner, they came across his sight and
buffeted his face, the noise of their unavailing regrets was all about
him. He saw clearly only now and then. At other times the picture quivered
dimly, through the veil of green reflections upon their movements. In the
room it must have been very still, and Plattner says the candle flame
streamed up into a perfectly vertical line of smoke, but in his ears each
footfall and its echoes beat like a clap of thunder. And the faces!
Two, more particularly near the woman's: one a woman's also, white and
clear-featured, a face which might have once been cold and hard, but which
was now softened by the touch of a wisdom strange to earth. The other
might have been the woman's father. Both were evidently absorbed in the
contemplation of some act of hateful meanness, so it seemed, which they
could no longer guard against and prevent. Behind were others, teachers,
it may be, who had taught ill, friends whose influence had failed. And
over the man, too--a multitude, but none that seemed to be parents or
teachers! Faces that might once have been coarse, now purged to strength
by sorrow! And in the forefront one face, a girlish one, neither angry nor
remorseful, but merely patient and weary, and, as it seemed to Plattner,
waiting for relief. His powers of description fail him at the memory of
this multitude of ghastly countenances. They gathered on the stroke of the
bell. He saw them all in the space of a second. It would seem that he was
so worked on by his excitement that, quite involuntarily, his restless
fingers took the bottle of green powder out of his pocket and held it
before him. But he does not remember that.

Abruptly the footsteps ceased. He waited for the next, and there was
silence, and then suddenly, cutting through the unexpected stillness like
a keen, thin blade, came the first stroke of the bell. At that the
multitudinous faces swayed to and fro, and a louder crying began all about
him. The woman did not hear; she was burning something now in the candle
flame. At the second stroke everything grew dim, and a breath of wind