He shook his head disconsolately, from side to side. “I can't!” he groaned, with a swifter recurrence of the sob-like convulsions. “I'm dying for sleep, but I'm too—too frightened!”
“Come, I'll sit beside you till you drop off,” she said, with masterful decision. He suffered himself to be pushed into recumbency on the couch, and put his head with docility on the pillow she brought from the spare room. When she had spread the fur over him, and pushed her chair close to the sofa, she stood by it for a little, looking down in meditation at his demoralized face. Under the painful surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had seen a few months before. Nothing essential had been taken away. There was only this pestiferous overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed. The face underneath was still all right.
With a soft, maternal touch, she smoothed the hair from his forehead into order. Then she seated herself, and, when he got his hand out from under the robe and thrust it forth timidly, she took it in hers and held it in a warm, sympathetic grasp. He closed his eyes at this, and gradually the paroxysmal catch in his breathing lapsed. The daylight strengthened, until at last tiny flecks of sunshine twinkled in the meshes of the further curtains at the window. She fancied him asleep, and gently sought to disengage her hand, but his fingers clutched at it with vehemence, and his eyes were wide open.
“I can't sleep at all,” he murmured. “I want to talk.”
“There 's nothing in the world to hinder you,” she commented smilingly.
“I tell you the solemn truth,” he said, lifting his voice in dogged assertion: “the best sermon I ever preached in my life, I preached only three weeks ago, at the camp-meeting. It was admitted by everybody to be far and away my finest effort! They will tell you the same!”
“It's quite likely,” assented Sister Soulsby. “I quite believe it.”
“Then how can anybody say that I've degenerated, that I've become a fool?” he demanded.
“I haven't heard anybody hint at such a thing,” she answered quietly.
“No, of course, YOU haven't heard them!” he cried. “I heard them, though!” Then, forcing himself to a sitting posture, against the restraint of her hand, he flung back the covering. “I'm burning hot already! Yes, those were the identical words: I haven't improved; I've degenerated. People hate me; they won't have me in their houses. They say I'm a nuisance and a bore. I'm like a little nasty boy. That's what they say. Even a young man who was dying—lying right on the edge of his open grave—told me solemnly that I reminded him of a saint once, but I was only fit for a barkeeper now. They say I really don't know anything at all. And I'm not only a fool, they say, I'm a dishonest fool into the bargain!”