"And for a city woman, too. Mrs. Yocomb had adopted you before all this
happened, and I don't believe she'll forget that you really saved
little Zillah's life."
"The dear little thing!" she exclaimed, tears starting to her eyes.
"How pathetic her little unconscious form was!"
"To me," I replied earnestly, "it was the most exquisite and sacred
thing I ever saw. I don't wonder you felt as you did when you said, 'I
can't--I won't give her up,' for it seemed at the moment almost as if
my life depended on her life, so powerful was her hold on my sympathy.
The doctor spoke truer than he thought, for it seems as if the
lightning had fused me into this family, and my grief would have been
almost as great as Reuben's had little Zillah not revived."
"I feel as if it would have broken my heart," and her tears fell fast.
Dashing them away she said, "I cry as well as laugh too easily, and I'm
often so provoked that I could shake myself. I must say that I think
we're all becoming well acquainted for people who have met so recently."
"Oh, as for you," I replied, "I knew you well in some previous state of
existence, and have just met you again."
"Mr. Morton," she said, turning on me brusquely, "I shall not be quite
sure as to your entire sanity till you have had a long sleep. You have
seemed a little out of your head on some points ever since our extended
acquaintance began. You have appeared impressed or oppressed with the
hallucination that this day--is it to-day or to-morrow?"
"It's to-day for a little while longer," I replied, looking at my watch.
"Well, then, that to-day was 'a day of fate,' and you made me nervous
on the subject--"
"Then I'm as sane as you are."
"No, I hadn't any such nonsense in my mind till you suggested it, but
having once entertained the idea it haunted me."
"Yes, and it haunts you still," I said, eagerly.
"What time is it, Mr. Morton?"
"It lacks but a few moments of midnight."
"No," she said, laughingly, "I don't believe anything more will happen
to-day, and as soon as the old clock downstairs strikes twelve I think
the light of reason will burn again in your disordered mind.
Good-night."
Instead of going, however, she hesitated, looked at me earnestly a
moment, then asked:
"You said you found me unconscious?"
"Yes."
"How did you revive me?"
"I carried you to the sofa under the window, which I opened. I then
chafed your hands, but I think the wind and spray restored you."
"I don't remember fainting before; and--oh, well, this whole experience
has been so strange that I can't realize it."
"Don't try to. If I'm a little out of my head, your soul will be out of
your body if you don't take better care of yourself. You might as well
be killed by lightning as over-fatigue. That doctor seems to think you
are made of india-rubber."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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