"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she
took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency,
performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise
which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.
It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he
made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became
articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He
opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that
were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the
floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear
of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.
"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.
She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed,
being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips--felt his lips on
them.
Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the
heart, stilling it--silencing pulse and breath--nay, thought itself. She
heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:
"I cared for you. You give me life--and I adore you.... Let me. It will
not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but
unless some day you will prove it for me--Betty--the problem of life is
but a sorry sum--a total of ciphers without end.
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