Her assent
was little and meagre; nothing would help her to expand it. The
Salvation Army rose before her as a mammoth skeleton, without a
suggestive bone.
Presently he said in a different way, as if he uttered an unguarded
thought, "I had so little to make me think she cared." There was in it
that phantom of speculation and concern which a sick man finds under
pressure, and it penetrated Alicia that he abandoned himself to his
invalid's privileges as if he valued them. He lay extended beside her
among his cushions and wraps; she tried to look at him, and got as far
as the hand nearest her, ungloved and sinewy, on the plaid of the rug.
"She told me it was not for your life she had been praying--only that if
you died you might be saved first." Her eyes were still on his hand, and
she saw the fingers close into the palm as if by an impulse to some kind
of action. Then they relaxed again, and he said, "Oh, well," and smiled
at the balancings of a crow drinking at a city conduit.
That was all. Alicia made an effort, odd and impossible enough, to
postpone her impressions, even her emotions. In the meantime it was
something to have got it over, and she was able at a bound to talk about
the commonplaces of the roadside.
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