"I--I never loved you as I do now. If it had not been for your wretchedness, I could have exulted in that agony."
Braine covers her hands with kisses. He dares not kiss her face. She looks like a beautiful white saint. He touches her hands reverently. He draws the folds of her gown closer about her.
"Ask Mrs. Case to come here. You go down-stairs now, if you won't go out. I will call you if I want you."
He protests, but resistance seems to excite her, and he obeys. He does not go down-stairs, however. He stays in the corridor just outside her door. For hours he walks tirelessly back and forth. Once in a while he hears that terrible sigh of suffering, and he leans heavily against the wall. The sweat springs out on his forehead in great drops. His suffering seems, for the moment, as terrible as hers. Once he groans aloud, and at once remembers that she has not made the faintest moan, and says between his teeth:
The nurse comes to the door now and then, sometimes calling him in, and then he kneels by the still, white woman, who gives his hands little weak, responsive pressures, and smiles at him. He remains until she motions him away, imperatively.
Night has settled. The lights are ablaze through the house. Dobson has spoken to him, and said that dinner was ready, and he has not heard him. He walks back and forth, back and forth, in the corridor. The heavy sighs sob more frequently through the half open door. Once Mrs. Case comes and tells him to send for the physician, and he gives the order, incoherently saying:
"Dr. Frame, and tell him to bring some more with him."
At this, Mrs. Case smiles quietly. The time passes fitfully. He looks at his watch once, and it is 8:30, and all is quiet in Helen's room.
In what seems to him but the next moment, he hears her make some moaning exclamation, and a slight rustling and moving about occurs. The agony lasts for what he thinks is three quarters of an hour, but when he looks at his watch again, it is only 8:40.
Helen's dog comes to the foot of the stairs, and looks up, and Braine leans over the balusters, and looks down at it. Once, he whispers down to it, as though it were a human being:
"It's terrible, isn't it?" and walks on, back and forth, through the hall again.