"Yes; nothing else," he said, mournfully. "God in heaven! that alone."
They were both silent. Then Eva sat upright again, shivering; her face was white and bloodless, her eyes fixed with a dull, vacant glare, like weathered glass.
"Oh Frank!" she cried—"Frank, I am so frightened! It is coming!"
"What, what?" he asked in alarm.
"I feel it coming upon me!" she moaned, panting. "It is like the sound of distant thunder, droning in my ears and in my brain. Great heavens! It is close to me! Frank, oh Frank! It is above me, over me. The thunder is over my head!" She shrieked and fought the air with her arms as if to beat something off, and her slender frame was convulsed as from a series of mysterious electric shocks. Her breath came rattling in her throat. Then she tottered, and he thought she would have fallen. He clasped her in his arms.
"Eva, Eva!" he cried.
She allowed him to drag her to the sofa without making any resistance, happy in his embrace in spite of her hallucination; and there she remained sitting by him, with his arm round her, cowering against his breast.
"Eva! come, Eva, what is it that ails you?"
"It has passed over," she murmured, almost inaudibly. "Yes, it is gone now—it is gone. It has come over me so often lately; it comes roaring on, slowly and stealthily, and then it breaks over my head, shaking me to the core; and then it goes away, dies away—away.... I am in such terror of it; it is like a monster which comes bellowing at me, and it frightens me so! What can it be?"
"I cannot tell; over-wrought nerves, perhaps," he said, consolingly.