The lash went home. The stricken figure huddled closer; the voice came out like a dumb thing's moan: "Oh—I'm all alone."
Then suddenly I understood. I had taken it for mockery, and profanation, that leering look at the shadow on the wall, that driveling stammer, "All—for the love—o' him." And it had been a solemn thing! No lover's word spoken in the morning of youth with the untried day before it, under the seductive witchery of answering breath and kisses, rushing blood and throbbing bodies; but the word of a woman bent with service, seamed with labor, haggard with watching; the word of a woman who, at the washtub, had kept her sufferer by the work of her hands, and watched him between the snatches of her sleep. The immemorial passion of a common heart, that is not much, that had not much, and has lost all. Years were in it. For years she had had her burden to carry; and she had carried it to the edge of the grave. There it had fallen from her, and her arms were empty. Nothing to do any more. Alone.
She sat up suddenly with a momentary flare of light in her face.—"As long as I had him," she said, "I could do. I thought I'd be glad when he was gone, a many and many a time. But I'd rather he was up there yet.... I did everything. I didn't put him away mean. There was a hundred and twenty-five dollars insurance. I spent it all on him. He was covered with flowers."
The flare died down, and she fell together like a collapsing bag. I saw the gray vacancy moving inward toward the last spark of intelligence in her eyes, as an ashing coal whitens inward toward the last dull red point of fire. Then this heap of rags shuddered with an inhuman whine, "A-l-o-n-e."
In the crowding shadows I felt the desolation pressing me like a vise. Behind that sunken heap in the chair gathered a midnight specter; for a moment I caught a flash from its royal, malignant eyes, the Monarch of human ruins, the murderous Bridegroom of widowed souls, King Alcohol.
"After all, as well that way as another," I muttered; and aloud (but the whip-cord had gone out of my voice), "The money is on the table."
She did not hear me; the Bridegroom "had given His Beloved Sleep."
I went out softly into the wild rain, and overhead, among the lashing arms of the leafless trees, and around the alley pocket, the wind was whining: "A-l-o-n-e."