Scarcely ever did she leave the four bare walls of her room, save for necessary business. Not only had she neither time nor strength, but now the soles of her shoes were worn into great holes and her stockings were no longer mendable, so that her bare feet trod the pavement, and became bruised and blistered.
And every effort, additional to the day's routine, was to be avoided. Scarcely could she drag herself up of a morning, repeatedly would she find that the treadle of the machine was being worked slower and yet more slowly, as a dull stupor and inertness crept like a fog over her mind. Once she wasted a whole afternoon by fainting, and came to herself to find that nightfall had set in while she was lying unconscious upon the floor.
"I wonder if I'm going to die? Perhaps I ought to warn somebody or—or do something. I wonder?" She asked herself this question one late afternoon as she finished tying up the parcel of completed blouses, and found that she could not walk across the room with them without staggering and reeling.
She recalled a ghastly account she had read in the paper, of a man who had died in a locked-up flat, and was never discovered until his corpse decomposed and soaked through the floor to the ceiling below.
"Mrs. Harbert is just underneath me. I wonder if she would move if that happened?" Evarne grimly and wretchedly pondered as she commenced to descend the stairs.
Ere she was half-way down she suddenly stood still. What was happening? Why was there that vast yawning pit below? It wasn't real—no, she knew it—but all the same it made her dizzy. She grew blind, and her brain seemed to heave madly. Dropping her parcel, she pressed both hands over her eyes. Was she swaying to and fro, or were the stairs rocking beneath her feet? She made a wild clutch at the banisters, but her fingers closed only upon the air. She was falling—falling—yet could not save herself, and a scream of terror rang through the house ere unconsciousness closed in upon her, and she fell with a dull thud down to the landing below.
CHAPTER XXVI
EVARNE'S VOCATION
When Evarne next opened her eyes she was lying cosily enough in bed. What a strange troubled sleep she had had, so full of confused dreams! Instantly came a fear of oversleeping, and she made an effort to rise. But the attempt was vain; even her half-opened lids were insupportably heavy. Languidly she let them droop, and then knew nothing more until a spoon was placed to her lips, and she felt some warm liquid meandering down her throat. At this the heavy lids were lifted widely in astonishment.