He is so pale--he frightened me!"
Judith looked down at the floor and was silent a moment. Sylvia's
heart began to beat fast with a new foreboding. "Why, what _is_ the
matter with--" she began.
Judith covered her face with her hands. "I don't know what to _do_!"
she said despairingly.
No phrase coming from Judith could have struck a more piercing alarm
into her sister's heart. She ran to Judith, pulled her hands down, and
looked into her face anxiously. "What do you mean, Judy--what do you
mean?"
"Why--it's five days now since Mother died, three days since the
funeral--and Father has hardly eaten a mouthful--and I don't think
he's slept at all. I know he hasn't taken his clothes off. And--and--"
she drew Sylvia again to the bed, and sat down beside her, "he says
such things ... the night after Mother died Lawrence had cried so I
was afraid he would be sick, and I got him to bed and gave him some
hot milk,"--the thought flashed from one to the other almost palpably,
"That is what Mother would have done"--"and he went to sleep--he was
perfectly worn out. I went downstairs to find Father. It was after
midnight. He was walking around the house into one room after another
and out on the porch and even out in the garden, as fast as he could
walk. He looked so--" She shuddered. "I went up to him and said,
'Father, Father, what are you doing?' He never stopped walking an
instant, but he said, as though I was a total stranger and we were in
a railway station or somewhere like that, 'I am looking for my wife.
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