That I know. But I could no more have refused
the promise than water to her dying lips. One awful evening
of fever and hallucination I had been sitting by her for a
long time. Her thoughts, poor sufferer, had been full of
_blood_--it is hard to write it--but there is the truth--a
physical horror of blood--the blood in which her dress--the
dress they took from her, her first night in prison--was
once steeped. She saw it everywhere, on her hands, the
sheets, the walls; it was a nausea, an agony of brain and
flesh; and yet it was, of course, but a mere symbol and
shadow of the manifold agony she had gone through. I will not
attempt to describe what I felt--what the man who knows that
his neglect and selfishness drove her the first steps along
this infernal road must feel to his last hour.--But at last
we were able--the nurse and I--to soothe her a little. The
nightmare lifted, we gave her food, and the nurse brushed her
poor brown hair, and tied round it, loosely, the little black
scarf she likes to wear. We lifted her on her pillows, and
her white face grew calm, and so lovely--though, as we
thought, very near to death.
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