“I am not calling it back. It comes, it comes! You must let me go on. You can’t stop me. That was the last time. The next time I saw her she had changed. I scarcely knew how—it was so little. The brightness was blurred. Then—then comes all the rest. Her growing illness—the anxiousness—the long days—the girl at the mills—the talk of those women—the first ghastly, damnable fear—the nights—the lying awake!” His breath came short and fast. He could not stop himself, it was plain. His words tumbled over each other as if he were a man telling a story in delirium.
“I can see her,” he said. “I can see her—as I went into her room. I can see her shaking hands and lips and childish, terrified eyes. I can feel her convulsive little fingers clutching my feet, and her face—her face—lying upon them when she fell down.”
“I cannot bear it,” cried Baird; “I cannot bear it.” He had uttered the same cry once before. He had received the same answer.
“She bore it,” said Latimer, fiercely. “That last night—in the cabin on the hillside—her cries—they were not human—no, they did not sound human——”
He was checked. It was Baird’s hand which clutched his arm now—it seemed as if for support. The man was swaying a little, and in the light of a street-lamp near them he looked up in a ghastly appeal.
“Latimer,” he said. “Don’t go on; you see I can’t bear it. I am not so strong as I was—before I began this work. I have lost my nerve. You bring it before me as it is brought before yourself. I am living the thing. I can’t bear it.”
Latimer came back from the past. He made an effort to understand and control himself.
“Yes,” he said, quite dull; “that was what the woman I spoke of told me—that she lived the thing again. It is not sane to let one’s self go back. I beg your pardon, Baird.”