"Mamma! Darling! Doctor--please--for God's sakes--please--she wants
something---she can't say it--give it to her! Try to make her tell me
what she wants--she wants something--this is terrible--don't let her
want something--mamma--just one word to me--try--try--O my
God--Doctor--"
A black arm then reached down to withdraw him from the glazed stare
which had begun to set in from the pillow.
By ten o'clock a light snow had set in, blowing almost horizontally
across the window-pane. He sat his second hour there in a rather forward
huddle beside the drawn shade of that window, the _sotto-voce_ comings
and goings, all the black-coated _parvenus_ that follow the wake of
death, moving about him. A clock shaped like a pilot's wheel, a boyhood
property which had marked the time of twenty years, finally chimed the
thin, tin stroke of eleven and after a swimming, nebulous interval,
twelve. He glanced up each time with his swollen eyes, and then almost
automatically out to the wall telephone in the hall opposite the open
door. But he did not move. In fact, for two more hours sat there
impervious to proffered warmth of word or deed. Meanwhile, the snow
behind the drawn shade had turned to rain that beat and washed
against the pane.
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