One day, it was less than a week after the first attack, Myra was called to the bedside of her husband. A great and terrible change had come upon that splendid form; the flesh had seemed to melt away from his limbs like mist from the uplands; his eyes were hollow; the skin upon his forehead a yellowish brown.
“Myra, my poor wife.”
She bent down and kissed the fever-stained forehead.
“My husband! you are better; there, the brightness is coming back to your eyes.”
“No, Myra, no; I feel strangely but not better.”
A movement of impotent sorrow revealed the struggle with which the poor woman strove to disprove this truth to her heart.
“Don’t say that—you don’t understand; wait till the doctor comes, he will tell you that I am right.”
The sick man moved his hand feebly on the pillow, and a moan broke from his lips.
Just then the doctor came in from his rounds in the infested city. The young wife appealed to him, with her mournful eyes trembling with an awful dread as his fingers touched the pulse.
“O doctor! is he better?”