amine, riotous with its second blooming,
swayed back and forth like a curtain; and as I bent over, the small,
white, deadly sweet blossoms caressed my face. A white moth whirred by
me into the room, and when I entered again, I saw that it was flying
swiftly in circles, above the flame of the night-lamp on the bureau.
Sally was sitting just as I had left her, her arm under the child's
head, her face bent forward as if listening to a distant, almost
inaudible sound. She appeared so still, so patient, that I wondered in
amazement if she had sat there for hours, unchanged, unheeding,
unapproachable? There was in her attitude, in her pensive quiet,
something so detached and tragic, that I felt suddenly that I had never
really seen her until that minute; and instead of going to her as I had
intended, I drew away, and stood on the threshold watching her almost as
a stranger might have done. Once the child stirred and cried, lifting
his little hands and letting them fall again with the same short cry of
distress. The flesh of my heart seemed to tear suddenly asunder, and I
sprang forward. Sally looked up at me, shook her head with a slow, quiet
movement, and I stopped short as if rooted there by the single step I
had taken. After ten years I remember every detail, every glimmer of
light, every fitful rise and fall of the breeze, as if, not visual
objects only, but scents, sounds, and movements, were photographed
indelibly on my brain. I know that the white moth fluttered about my
head, and that raising my hand, I caught it in my palm, which closed
over it with violence. Then the cry from little Benjamin came again, and
opening my palm, I watched the white moth fall dead, with crushed wings,
to the floor. When I forget all else in my life, I shall still see Sally
sitting motionless, like a painted figure, in the faint, reddish glow of
the night-lamp, while above her, and above the little waxen face on her
knee, the shadow, of the palm-leaf fan, waved by Aunt Euphronasia,
flitted to and fro like the wing of a bat.

At midnight the doctor came, and when he left, I followed him to the
front steps.

"I'll come again at dawn," he said, "and in the meantime look out for
your wife. She's been strained to the point of breaking."

"You think, then, that the child is--is hopeless?"

"Not hopeless, but very serious. I'll be back in a few hours. If there's
a change, send for me, and remember, as I said, look out for your wife."

I went