The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing.
It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square vanished in a vaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were like rows of bloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness.
Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me until a little before dinner time. Then the old actress came up, rather fantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her head), to say that the boarders were going to have a dance and wished me to join them. I excused myself on the ground of headache, and she said:
"Young women often suffer from it. It's a pity, though! Christmas night, too!"
Not long after she had gone, I heard, through the frequent tooting of the taxis in the street, the sound of old-fashioned waltzes being played on the piano, and then a dull thudding noise on the floor below, mingled with laughter, which told me that the old boarders were dancing.
I dare say my head was becoming light. I had eaten nothing for nearly forty hours, and perhaps the great shock which chance had given me had brought me near to the blank shadowland which is death.
I remember that in some vague way there arose before me a desire to die. It was not to be suicide—my religion saved me from that—but death by exhaustion, by continuing to abstain from food, having no desire for it.
Martin was gone—what was there to live for? Had I not better die before my child came to life? And if I could go where Martin was I should be with him eternally.
Still I did not weep, but—whether audibly or only in the unconscious depths of my soul—more than once I cried to Martin by name.
"Martin! Martin! I am coming to you!"