Outside the moonless night, as if choked with quiet, crowded up from the empty street.
When Winnie lifted her lids a little they showed only the lower rim of the pain-flecked irises. Dr. Beach examined the purplish nails on her cold hands and felt her pulse uneasily.
Suddenly Winnie clutched at the nurse's hands, and, with eyes open and unseeing, uttered shriek after shriek.
The sick woman was lost in pain as in a wilderness. Her hands and feet were strange. The bed was strange. In the vast bed, so far from one end to the other, she had lost her feet.
She knew there was blood on her. The world poured from her, molten.
The nurse put the chloroform cap over Winnie's nose. Then her head detached itself from her body and floated over the bed. Her head danced like a golden thistle on a pool of blood.
Her lightness expanded. She was vastly light. And the body in the bed in the dark pool grew still, and small, and far off. She was pale and angry with joy.
But through the mist of herself, something leaped angrily upon her and dragged her to earth. Hot claws sank into her. She sank, nerveless, in the infinite darkness.
She was in bed again. The vast bed stretched from side to side of the unseen sky, and oscillated like a ship.
Not enough chloroform. She wanted to tell them, but they were too far away. They could not have heard.