The bottle was so small that it lay easily in the palm of her
hand. She let it remain there for a little while, and stood looking at
it.
"DEATH!" she said. "In this drop of brown drink--DEATH!"
As the words passed her lips, an agony of unutterable horror seized on
her in an instant. She crossed the room unsteadily, with a maddening
confusion in her head, with a suffocating anguish at her heart. She
caught at the table to support herself. The faint clink of the bottle,
as it fell harmlessly from her loosened grasp and rolled against some
porcelain object on the table, struck through her brain like the stroke
of a knife. The sound of her own voice, sunk to a whisper--her voice
only uttering that one word, Death--rushed in her ears like the rushing
of a wind. She dragged herself to the bedside, and rested her head
against it, sitting on the floor. "Oh, my life! my life!" she thought;
"what is my life worth, that I cling to it like this?"
An interval passed, and she felt her strength returning. She raised
herself on her knees and hid her face on the bed. She tried to pray--to
pray to be forgiven for seeking the refuge of death. Frantic words burst
from her lips--words which would have risen to cries, if she had not
stifled them in the bed-clothes.
Pages:
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827