The strangeness of his answering voice only repeated the stab of fear. She was on her feet, had made a light....
He was not suffering any more. He was perfectly conscious and rational. But from the waist down he could not move nor feel.
The doctors came and talked a great deal and said little; they reminded them that not much was known of this sort of thing; they would be glad to do what they could....
“You don't mean to say this is permanent? Paralyzed? I? Oh, absurd!” Awful things happened to other people, of course—scandal, death—but to one's self—“Oh, it doesn't sound true! It can't be true. Paralyzed? I?”
And Bessie wondered why this had been sent on her.
The explanation was hit on long afterward, when in one of his campaign stories Guy mentioned a fall from his horse, with his spine against a rock, that had laid him unconscious for twenty-two hours.
And so the war, which had been responsible for their starting together with only a past and a future, was responsible for their having shortly only a past. Guy was not allowed his ten years.
Though he had now less actual pain, the shock seemed to jar the foundations of his life, and the sharp change in the habits of an active and vigorous body seemed to wreck his whole system. For months and months and months he seemed only a bundle of exposed nerves—that is, where he had any movement or sensation at all.
Now a past, however escutcheoned and fame-enrolled, is even more starvation diet than a future of affection and self-confidence. No help was to be had from either of their homes; it was the day of self-help for all.
Bessie wondered why this had been sent on her, but she took a couple of boarders at once, she sold sponge-cake and beaten biscuit, she got up classes in bread-making. And Guy stopped her busy passing to draw her hand to his lips, or watched her with dumb eyes.