Caroline's hand was on Letty's pulse, and she replied without looking at him, "She is getting restless. Miss Webster, is it time for the medicine?"
"It is not quite half-past ten. That must be the doctor now at the door."
Rising hurriedly, Blackburn went out into the hall, and when he came back, Doctor Boland was with him. As Caroline left the bedside and went to the chair by the fire, she heard Blackburn ask sharply, "What does the change mean, doctor?" and Doctor Boland's soothing response, "Wait a while. Wait a while." Then he stooped to make an examination, while Miss Webster prepared a stimulant, and Letty moaned aloud as if she were frightened. A clock outside was just striking eleven when the doctor said in a subdued tone, too low to be natural, yet too clear to be a whisper, "Her pulse is getting weaker." He bent over the bed, and as Caroline stood up, she saw Letty's face as if it were in a dream—the flat, soft hair, the waxen forehead, the hard, bright eyes, and the bluish circle about the small, quivering mouth. Then she crossed the floor like a white shadow, and in a little while the room sank back into stillness. Only the dropping of the ashes, and the low crooning of Mammy Riah, disturbed the almost unendurable silence.
For the first hour, while she sat there, Caroline felt that the discipline of her training had deserted her, and that she wanted to scream. Then gradually the stillness absorbed her, and there swept over her in waves a curious feeling of lightness and buoyancy, as if her mind had detached itself from her body, and had become a part of the very pulse and rhythm of the life that surrounded her. She had always lived vividly, with the complete reaction to the moment of a vital and sensitive nature; and she became aware presently that her senses were responsive to every external impression of the room and the night. She heard the wind in the elms, the whispering of the flames, the muttering of Mammy Riah, the short, fretful moans that came from Letty's bed; and all these things seemed a part, not of the world outside, but of her own inner consciousness. Even the few pale stars shining through the window, and the brooding look of the room, with its flickering firelight and its motionless figures, appeared thin and unsubstantial as if they possessed no objective reality. And out of this vagueness and evanescence of the things that surrounded her, there stole over her a certainty, as wild and untenable as a superstition of Mammy Riah's, that there was a meaning in the smallest incident of the night, and that she was approaching one of the cross-roads of life.
A coal dropped on the hearth; she looked up with a start, and found Blackburn's eyes upon her. "Miss Meade, have you the time? My watch has run down."
She glanced at the little clock on the mantelpiece. "It is exactly one o'clock."
"Thank you." His gaze passed away from her, and she leaned back in her chair, while the sense of strangeness and unreality vanished as quickly as it had come. The old negress was mending the fire with kindling wood, and every now and then she paused and shook her head darkly at the flames. "I ain' sayin' nuttin', but I knows, honey," she repeated.
"Hadn't you better go to bed, Mammy Riah?" asked Caroline pityingly.
"Naw'm, I 'ouldn't better git to baid. I'se got ter watch."
"There isn't anything that you can do, and I'll call you, if there is a change."