"Yes, yes, I'm coming. . . ."
There, there she lay . . . covered all over, with the sheet. She was nothing but a blue, motionless woman's shape . . . under a sheet. Now . . . flowers lay over the sheet: all the white flowers of his imagination. Now his fingers tore into little pieces the plank which he carried on his heart and strewed them in between the flowers: into such little, little pieces that they were as the petals of flowers . . . and nothing more . . . over the woman. . . .
The voices called him.
"Yes, yes, I'm coming . . . I'm coming . . ."
The voices lured him home, to bed; and he jogged on through the streets raining with dragon's blood. . . .
When he reached home, Adeline at once sent for the doctor. . . . It was typhoid fever.
