Then I thought I heard a faint tapping on the
wall--the mere ghost of the familiar signal. In a
few moments it was repeated: one, two, three--no
louder than before, but addressing a sense alert and
strained to receive it. I was about to reply when the
Adversary of Peace again intervened in my affairs
with a rascally suggestion of retaliation. She had
long and cruelly ignored me; now I would ignore
her. Incredible fatuity--may God forgive it ! All
the rest of the night I lay awake, fortifying
my obstinacy with shameless justifications and--
listening.
'Late the next morning, as I was leaving the
house, I met my landlady, entering.
'"Good morning, Mr. Dampier," she said. "Have
you heard the news?"
'I replied in words that I had heard no news; in
manner, that I did not care to hear any. The manner
escaped her observation.
'"About the sick young lady next door," she
babbled on. "What! you did not know? Why, she
has been ill for weeks. And now--"
'I almost sprang upon her. "And now," I cried,
"now what?"
'"She is dead."
'That is not the whole story. In the middle of the
night, as I learned later, the patient, awakening
from a long stupor after a week of delirium, had
asked--it was her last utterance--that her bed be
moved to the opposite side of the room. Those in
attendance had thought the request a vagary of her
delirium, but had complied. And there the poor pass-
ing soul had exerted its failing will to restore a
broken connection--a golden thread of sentiment
between its innocence and a monstrous baseness
owning a blind, brutal allegiance to the Law of
Self.
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