. .
Suddenly she was wide awake. The lamp had burnt down to a low rim of
light. Martin was coughing in the other room. Coughing! She had
never heard such a cough, something inhuman and strange. She stood
up, her hands clutched. She waited. Then, as it continued, growing
fiercer and fiercer, so that in spite of the closed door it seemed
to be in the very room with her, she could bear it no longer.
She opened the door and went in. The room was lit by a candle placed
on a chair beside the bed. Martin was sitting up, his hands
clenched, his face convulsed. The cough went on--choking,
convulsing, as though some terrible enemy had hands at his windpipe.
He grasped the bedclothes, his eyes, frightened and dilated, staring
in front of him.
She went to him. He did not look at her, but whispered in a voice
that seemed to come from miles away:
"Bottle . . . over there . . . glass."
She saw on the wash-hand stand a bottle with a medicine glass behind
it. She read the directions, poured out the drops, took it over and
gave it to him. He swallowed it down. She put out her arm to steady
him and felt his whole body tremble beneath her hand.
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