"And he's so cold!"
"No!" she scorned. "He don't feel cold. You think he's cold. But he ain't. That's just what you think. He's comfortable. He's glad to be dead. Everybody's glad to be dead."
The boy shuddered.
"Don't you do that no more!" said the woman. "It don't hurt to be dead. Honest, it don't! It feels real good to be that way."
"I—I—I don't think I'd like—to be dead!"
"You don't have to if you don't want to," the woman replied, thrown into a confusion of pain and alarm. To comfort him, to shield him from agony, to keep the shadow of fear from falling upon him: she desired nothing more; and she was content to succeed if but for the moment. "I tell you," she continued, "you never will be dead—if you don't want to. Your father wanted to be dead. 'I think, Millie,' says he, 'I'd like to be dead.' 'All right, Dick,' says I. 'If you want to, I won't stand in your way. But I don't know about the boy.' 'Oh,' says he, 'the boy won't stand in my way.' 'I guess that's right, Dick,' says I, 'for the boy loves you.' And so," she concluded, "he died. But you don't have to die. You'll never die—not unless you want to." She kissed him. "Don't you be afraid, dear!" she crooned.
"I'm not—afraid."
"Well, then," she asked, puzzled, "what are you?"
"I don't know," he faltered. "I think it makes me—sick at the—stomach."
He had turned white. She took him in her arms, to comfort and hearten him—an unfailing device: her kisses, her warm, ample bosom, her close embrace; he was by these always consoled....