"If you feel faint, you'd better get out into the air." And she dismissed them from her presence.
Falling, being hurled down, those sensations had been bad enough—but the shock of this crashing landing! Those two women went out of that office, down the elevator, out on to the street so dazed that their minds seemed blank, so "taken aback" they were, so strongly jerked back from the edge of destruction. Martha, standing pressed close against her mother, one arm around her, staring into her face, stood stuttering there in the winter darkness, on the curb.
"D-d-d-do you believe it, mammie?" She began laughing and crying. "Mammie! mammie!" she kept stuttering. "Do you believe it?"
In the taxi they found, Martha gave way to hysterics. She laughed and she sobbed crazily. "Oh, mammie, if she could be right! Can she be right? Am I all right? She don't know what she's talking about. Oh, tell me, can it be true?" She was shaking Emily, trying to shake assurance out of her. "Tell me if it can be true, mammie!"
"Why, Martha—a doctor—must know——"
"No! She doesn't understand! How could it not be? Mammie, tell me. Oh, suppose it's true; I can live! Mammie, I can see you don't believe her! We can go home now. You won't tell dad! Oh, I will be good to you. Didn't they say she was a good doctor? Mammie, what did that nurse say about her? But I did try every day to think it wasn't true. And it was. Why was I so sick every morning? Maybe I've only got a cancer, mammie!" Crying out a phrase like that, the child was in such a madness of hope. "Oh, suppose she's right!"
"Martha, I feel like giving you the awfulest spanking anybody ever got!"
"Oh yes! Oh, I don't mind. Mammie, imagine if it isn't true; if I'm saved. Here, here's your rings; I don't need rings!"
When they drew up in front of the hotel, Emily forced her to be quiet. But Martha, in their room, threw off her coat and her hat and all restraint in a great gesture. She was lit up, she was drunk with hope. She walked around the room babbling, her face ghastly pale and bright, stopping to hug her mother, stretching out her arms, stretching them above her towards the ceiling.
"Suppose it's true! Suppose it's all right! Suppose I'm safe! I can live now. No operation, mammie! That woman must have been fifty! She must know what she's talking about. Didn't you think she looked like a good doctor? She must have examined thousands of women. I'm free; I'm safe!" She stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. "Oh, look at me!" she cried. "That's how I feel." And Emily, who had sunk down on to the bed in her bewilderment, watching Martha, suddenly began to cry. That superhuman strength seemed to have abandoned her. For the girl had looked for a moment intently at her reflection, and then turned, half crazy with joy, to her suitcase. She had snatched out her toilet things, she was powdering her nose, she was rubbing something on her white cheeks, herself again. "Oh, I can live now! Live! Live!" And she turned away from the glass and ran to Emily—she had heard her sniffling—and began consoling kisses and penitential hugs and tears.