"I feel," said Putnam suddenly, "as though I should live for ever."
"Did you ever doubt it?" she asked.
"Oh, I mean here—ici bas—in the body. I can't conceive of death or of a spiritual existence on such a day as this."
"There is nothing here to live for," she said wearily. Presently she added, "This hot glare makes me sick: I wish those men would stop hammering on the bridge. I wish I could die and get away into the dark."
Putnam paused before replying. He had never heard her speak so impatiently. Was the revulsion coming? Was she growing tired of sorrow? After a minute he said, "Ah, you don't know what it is to be a convalescent and lie for months in a darkened room listening to the hand-organ man and the scissors-grinder, and the fellow that goes through the street hallooing 'Cash paid for rags!' It's like having a new body to get the use of your limbs again and come out into the sunshine."
"Were you very sick?" she inquired with some show of interest.
He remembered with some mortification that he had told her so once or twice before. She had apparently forgotten it. "Yes, I nearly died."
"Were you glad to recover?"
"Well, I can't remember that I had any feelings in particular when I first struck the up-track. It was hard work fighting for life, and I don't think I cared much one way or the other. But when I got well enough to sit up it began to grow interesting. I used to sit at the window in a very infantile frame of mind and watch everything that went by. It wasn't a very rowdy life, as the prisoner in solitary confinement said to Dickens. We live in a back street, where there's not much passing. The advent of the baker's cart used to be the chief excitement. It was painted red and yellow, and he baked very nice leaf-cookies. My mother would hang a napkin in the door-knocker when she wanted him to stop; and as I couldn't see the knocker from my window, I used to make bets with Dummy as to whether the wagon would stop or not."
"Your mother is living, then?"