anything about it.

She set her teeth hard, pressing back the disgust that rose again
and again as though to choke her, and commenced to wash, scrub, clean.
She fetched water for herself again and again, the pitcher full, a
whole pailful. She had to do it furtively, to creep across the passage
on tiptoe. Oh dear, how the water splashed, how noisily it poured into
the pail when she turned the tap on. If only nobody, nobody found out
anything about it.

She had found a cloth to scour with, and what she had never done
before in her life she did now, for she lay on her knees like a servant
and rubbed the floor, and crept about in front of the bed and under the
bed, and stretched out her arms so as to be sure to get into every
corner. Nothing must be forgotten, everything must be flooded with
fresh, clean, purifying water. Everything in the room seemed to her to
be soiled--as though it were damaged and degraded--the floor, the
furniture, the walls. She would have preferred to have washed the
wall-paper too, that beautiful deep-coloured wallpaper, or to have torn
it off entirely.

She had never worked like that in her life before. Her pretty
morning-gown with the silk insertions and lace clung to her body with
the perspiration of exertion and fear. The dress had dark
spots on the knees from slipping about in the wet, the hem of the train
had got into the water; her hair was dishevelled; it had come undone
and was hanging round her hot face. Nobody would have recognised Frau
Schlieben as she was now.

At last, thank goodness! Kate looked round with a sigh of relief;
the air in the room was quite different now. The fresh wind that blew
in through the open window had cleared everything. Only he, he did not
suit amid all that cleanliness. His forehead was covered with clammy
sweat, his cheeks were livid, his lips swollen, cracked, his hair
bristly, standing straight up in tufts. Then she washed him, too,
cooled his forehead and dried it, rubbed his cheeks with soap and a
sponge, fetched a brush and comb, combed and smoothed his hair, ran
quickly across to her room, brought the Florida water that stood on her
dressing-table and sprinkled it over him. Now she had only to put on
another bed-spread. She could not do any more, it was too difficult for
her to lift him. For he did not awake. He lay there like a tree that
had been hewn down--dead, stiff, immovable--and noticed nothing of the
trembling hands that glided over him, th