d
came louder than before. It came from Beulah Sands's office. With a bound
I was at the open door. My God, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me
even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray
figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late,
sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her
elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had
evidently been reading when Bob entered. God knows how long she had been
reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side of her chair, his
hands clasped and uplifted in an agony of appeal that was supplemented by
the awful groans. His face showed unspeakable terror and entreaty; the
eyes were bursting from their sockets and were riveted on hers as those of
a man in a dungeon might be fixed upon an approaching spectre of one whom
he had murdered. His chest rose and fell, as though trying to burst some
unseen bonds that were crushing out his life. With every breath would come
the awful groan that had first brought me to him. Beulah Sands had half
turned her face until her eyes gazed into Bob's with a sweet, childish
perplexity. I looked at her, surprised that one whom I had always seen so
intelligently masterful should be passive in the face of such anguish.
Then, horror of horrors! I saw that there was something missing from her
great blue eyes. I looked; gasped. Could it possibly be? With a bound I
was at her side. I gazed again into those eyes which that morning had been
all that was intelligent, all that was godlike, all that was human. Their
soul, their life was gone. Beulah Sands was a dead woman; not dead in
body, but in soul; the magic spark had fled. She was but an empty shell--a
woman of living flesh and blood; but the citadel of life was empty, the
mind was gone. What had been a woman was but a child. I passed my hand
across my now damp forehead. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Bob's
figure, with clasped, uplifted hands, and bursting eyes, was still there.
There still resounded through the room the awful guttural groans. Beulah
Sands smiled, the smile of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful
hand from the paper and passed it over Bob's bronzed cheek, just as the
infant touches its mother's face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I
almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity
must have wandered from her face, for I sudde