“Zuleime!!” he cried, a third time, going towards her, to seize her shoulder.
But he started back in affright. They were all gazing at her now.
“My God! she is DEAD!” ejaculated the father.
“She is MAD!” exclaimed Georgia.
They gathered around her. She knew it not. She sat there as if frozen into that attitude—her face white and hard—her lips bloodless and stiff, and her eyes still fixed towards the spot from which Georgia had been reading, but beyond it—beyond it—into the far distance, as if fascinated by some spectacle there of unutterable horror!
“Zuleime! what are you looking at? Speak to me, my child!” cried her father, in great distress.
He might as well have expected a statue to speak.
Carolyn took the knitting away, which, through all this, had dangled between her stiff, unconscious fingers. Georgia rubbed her hands. Carolyn bathed her face. The old man cried to her—all in vain! They might as well have performed these offices for the dead.
They lifted her up, and laid her on a sofa—her limbs hanging helplessly, like those of a dead or swooning girl. But she was neither dead nor swooning. Wherever they moved her, her eyes were still fixed, in that bright, burning, horrible stare, upon the distance, as though the vision of the ghastly spectacle that had been conjured up before her imagination, followed her wherever she was turned.
They took her up stairs, undressed and put her to bed. All night long she lay in the same state.