Dissolved by his indifference, the past
vanished like a white powder in a glass of water. She might have been a
woman overtaken by a mental paroxysm in the cold impersonality of a
railway station. "Stop it," he commanded sharply; "you are hysterical,
all kinds of a fool."
"Only one kind," she corrected him, in a voice so rasped that it might
have come from a rusted throat; "and I'm not going to be it much
longer. You have cured me, you and that Savina. But what--what makes me
laugh is how you thought you could explain and lie and bully me.
Anything would do to tell me, I'd swallow it like one of those big
grapes." She was speaking in gusts, between the labored heavings of her
breast; her eyes were staring and dark; and her hands opened and shut,
shut and opened, continuously. Fanny's cheeks were now mottled, there
were fluctuating spots of red, blue shadows, on the pallor of her skin.
"In a minute more you'll be sick," he warned her.
"Oh, God," she whispered, "that's all he knows, all he feels! In a
minute, a minute, I'll be sick. Don't you see, you damned fool," her
voice rose until it seemed impossible that she could hold the pitch,
"can't you understand I am dying?"
"No." His terseness was calculated: that, he thought, would best
control her wildness. "No one could be more alive. If I were you,
though, I'd go up to bed; we've had enough of this, or I have; I can't
speak for you.
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