Authors -- Fiction; Ghosts -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
He advanced to the door and knocked. Nobody answered. The monotone
continued. He knocked again. Nobody answered. The monotone continued. He
tried the knob. The door was locked. With his hand still on the knob, he
put his shoulder to the door; gave it a slow resistless pressure. It
burst open.
It was a small room and furnished with the conventional furnishings of a
bedroom. Lindsay saw but two things in it. One was a girl, sitting up in
the bed in the corner; a beautiful slim creature with streaming loose
red hair; her cheeks vivid with fever spots; her eyes brilliant with
fever-light. It was she who emitted the monotone.
The other thing was a miniature, standing against the glass on the
bureau. A miniature of a beautiful woman in the full lusciousness of a
golden blonde maturity.
The woman of the miniature was Lutetia Murray.
The girl--
X
She felt that the room was full of sunshine. Even through her glued-down
lids she caught the darting dazzle of it. She knew that the air was full
of bird voices. Even through her drowse-filmed ears, she caught the
singing sound of them. She would like to lift her lids. She would like
to wake up. But after all it was a little too easy to sleep. The impulse
with which she sank back to slumber was so soft that it was scarcely
impulse. It dropped her slowly into an enormous dark, a colossal quiet.
Presently she drifted to the top of that dark quiet. Again the sunlight
flowed into the channels of seeing. Again the birds picked on the
strings of hearing. By an enormous effort she opened her eyes.
She stared from her bed straight at a window. A big vine stretched films
of green leaf across it. It seemed to color the sunshine that poured
onto the floor--green. She looked at the window for a long time.
Presently she discovered among the leaves a crimson, vase-like flower.
"Why, how thick the trumpet-vine has grown!" she said aloud.
It seemed to her that there was a movement at her side. But that
movement did not interest her. She did not fall into a well this time.
She drifted off on a tide of sleep. Presently--perhaps it was an hour
later, perhaps five minutes--she opened her eyes. Again she stared at
the window. Again the wonder of growth absorbed her thought; passed out
of it. She looked about the room. Her little bedroom set, painted a soft
creamy yellow with long tendrils of golden vine, stood out softly
against the faded green cartridge paper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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