“Oh, don’t laugh, Rockhurst, don’t laugh…! Oh, if you like not a salt cheek, I can be merry—”
Chitterley had drawn back, step by step, to the farther end of the room. Then, of a sudden, very loud and angrily, he spoke:—
“Madam, you are ailing. You are ill. You must go home!”
She came back to her surroundings with a start and a cry:—
“Mon Dieu, where am I? Ill? Yes, I am ill! I am strangling, I can’t breathe!” She clutched at her throat with both hands, feeling for something with frantic fingers; then, with a scream that rose and seemed to circle about the silent room like some phantom bird: “Miséricorde! they are there!… La peste! I have the peste.…”
Chitterley’s grey hair bristled on his head.
“A physician!” he cried, and turned to fly.
But, in her delirium, she was quicker than he in his senile confusedness. She caught him by the wrist with both her hands, now burning as though, indeed, she had drunk fire:—
“No! You shall not leave me! I am dying.… I will not die alone!” The fleeting of madness returned to her fever-wasted brain: “We are put in this world with five senses—and ’tis but common sense to pleasure them. Aye, Rockhurst … but when it comes to dying!…” Her grip relaxed; she wrung her hands. “How can such as we die? Old man, a priest, a priest!”