When he looked again he saw that the curtain had fallen. It was as though the spirit of Rose Wilding which for a few minutes had stirred the body and the senses to life had now gone. Only the eyes remained alive, looking, looking not at Wardwell, not at the wall, but at some problem, some question of another existence.
Augusta, understanding instantly, did not try to arouse her mother again. Resignedly, she took up the tray and went silently from the room. And Wardwell followed without a word.
Not again, until the very last, did Rose Wilding open her lips to speak.
Day by day her response to the promptings of life grew less and less. With what seemed a deliberate purpose her spirit refused to know anything of what went on about her. It was as though she definitely turned her back upon life. She did not suffer. She had left all that behind and was going her own way, unmolested by the useless body.
To Wardwell the sight of the helpless, almost deserted body was sometimes uncanny. To Augusta, however, living as she did and had always done so close to the soul of her mother, these things did not greatly matter. That her mother did not speak to her, did not even look at her, was not now so hard to bear. Though she loved the big beautiful, baby-like body and petted it as she would have fondled a baby, yet she was able to realize that she must soon give it up. So that, by degrees and without consciousness of it, she dropped the mediums of the senses and found herself slipping easily and naturally over into that strange border land where her mother lived.
Wardwell was not fighting any longer. He had accepted what he thought was fate. He did not argue. He did not look farther for work.
"I shall now," he said, sitting down deliberately at his machine, "'proceed,' as they say aboard-ship—I wonder why does a navy man always say he 'proceeded' to the deck and 'proceeded' to the bottom of the ammunition well? He just ran out on deck, and he probably fell down the stairs in the other case, but he 'proceeded'—I shall, therefore, proceed to write jokes till I choke.
"The suffering public? Well, the public always suffers. What do I care for them, or it, or him—whichever it is. Must be him, I guess. The women only read the corn cure ads and the hair tonic miracles with which the advertising editor garnishes the funny page. Hang it! I never appreciated that fellow. I thought he was a low commercial bounder on that page. Nothing of the kind. He belongs there. His ads are just as old and reliable and well thumbed as any of the other jokes."
With a grin on his face he went to work, humming:
"Rip Van Winkle was a piker,