handle at the first
thing she would say. He told himself that he had been stupid, hard--a
bungler. It made him feel better to tell himself that. Yes, he certainly
had been unsympathetic, and it was a shame that anything had come to
make Amy unhappy--and right there at first, too! Why, it was actually
making her sick! When he went back after taking his mother home Amy said
she had a bad headache and didn't want to talk. She was so queer that he
had taken her at her word and had not tried to talk to her--be nice to
her. It seemed now that he hadn't been kind; it helped him to feel that
he hadn't been kind. And it was the headache, being roused in the night
when she was not well that had made her so--well, so wrought up about
his answering to the call of the Hollands--old patients, old friends. He
was going to be different; he was going to be more tender with Amy--that
would be the way to make her understand. Such were the things his
troubled mind and hurt heart tried to be persuaded of as, thinking at
the same time of other things--the death to which he was hurrying, how
hard it would be for Ruth if Cyrus didn't speak to her--he passed
swiftly by the last houses where people slept and turned from a world
tinged with the strangeness of an hour so little known to men's
consciousness, softly opened the door and stepped into the house where
death was touching life with that same unreality with which, without,
day touched night.

Miss Copeland, wrapped in a bathrobe, sat in the upstairs hall. "He's
still breathing," she whispered in that voice which is for death alone.
In the room Ruth and Ted stood close together, the nurse on the other
side of the bed. Ruth's hair was braided down her back; he remembered
when she used to wear it that way, he had one of those sudden pictures
of her--on her way to school, skipping along with Edith Lawrence. She
turned, hearing him, and there was that rush of feeling to her eyes that
always claimed him for Ruth, that quick, silent assumption of his
understanding that always let down bars between them. But Ruth kept
close to Ted, as if she would shield him; the boy looked as Deane had
seen novices look in the operating room.

There was nothing for him to do beyond look at his patient and nod to
the nurse in confirmation that it would be any minute now. He walked
around to Ted and Ruth, taking an arm of each of them and walking with
them to the far side of the room.

"There's nothing to do but