hildren, my children, like in a dream I feel."

She smiled at them with the tears streaming from her face like rain down
a window-pane, opened the door to the room adjoining gently, and closed
it more gently behind her. Her face was bathed in a peace that swam deep
in her eyes like reflected moonlight trailing down on a lagoon, her lips
trembled in the hysteria of too many emotions. She held the silence for
a moment, and remained with her wide back to the door, peering across
the dim-lit room at the curve-backed outline of her husband's figure,
hunched in a sitting posture on the side of the bed.

Beside him on the white coverlet a green tin box with a convex top like
a miniature trunk lay on one end, its contents, bits of old-fashioned
jewelry, and a folded blue document with a splashy red seal, scattered
about the bed.

She could hear him wheeze out the moany, long-drawn breaths that
characterized his sleepless nights, his face the color of old ivory, wry
and etched in the agony of carrying his trembling palm closer, closer to
his mouth.

Suddenly Mrs. Binswanger cried out, a cry that was born in the
unexplored regions of her heart, wild, primordial, full of terror.

It was as if fear had churned her blood too thick to flow, and through
her paralysis tore the spasm of a half-articulate shriek.

"Jule--Jule-ius--Jule-ius!"

His hand jerked from his lips reflexly, so that the six small pink
tablets in the trembling palm rolled to the corners of the room. His
blood-driven face fell backward against the pillow, and he relaxed
frankly into short, dry sobs, hollow and hacking like the coughing of a
cat. His feet lay in the little heap of jewelry and across the crumpled
insurance policy.

"Becky--it--it's all what I--I could do--it's--it--"

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

She dragged her trembling limbs across the room to his side. She held
him to her so close that the showy lace yoke transformed its imprint
from her bosom to the flesh of his cheek. She could feel his sobs of
hysteria beating against her breast, and her own tears flowed.

They racked her like a storm tearing on the mad wings of a gale; they
scalded down her cheeks into the furrows of her neck. She held him tight
in the madness of panic and exultation, and his arm crept around her
wide waist, and his tired head relaxed to her breast, and her hands were
locked tight about him and would not let him go.

"We--we're going _home_, Julius--we--we're going