One of the ugly outrages of
life, leaving nothing on the mouth but that brief acceptance. It came to
her with a note of the profound and of the supreme. "So," she said, and
pressed her lips till they stopped trembling, and went into the
hospital.
She asked a question or two, in search of Sister Margaret and the new
case. It was "located," an assistant surgeon told her, in Private Ward
Number 2. She went more and more slowly toward Private Ward Number 2.
The door was open. She stood in it for an instant with eyes nerved to
receive the tragedy. The room seemed curiously empty of any such thing.
A door opposite was also open, with an arched verandah outside; the low
sun streamed through this upon the floor with its usual tranquillity.
Beyond the arches, netted to keep the crows away, it made pictures with
the tops of the trees. There was the small iron bed with the confused
outline under the bedclothes, very quiet, and the Sister--the
whitewashed wall rose sharp behind her black draperies--sitting with a
book in her hands. Some scraps of lint were on the floor beside the bed
and hardly anything else, except the silence, which had almost a
presence, and a faint smell of carbolic acid, and a certain feeling of
impotence and abandonment and waiting which seemed to be in the air.
Pages:
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388