When the long day had worn out at last, she came from an open store filled
with stretchers, and started homeward over the burning pavement. Her search
was useless, and the reaction from her terrible fear left her with a sudden
tremor in her heart. As she walked she leaned heavily upon Mammy Riah, and
her colour came and went in quick flashes. The heat had entered into her
brain and with it the memory of open wounds and the red hands of surgeons.
Reaching the house at last, she flung herself all dressed upon the bed and
fell into a sleep that was filled with changing dreams.
At midnight she cried out in agony, believing herself to be still in the
street. When Mammy Riah bent over her she did not know her, but held out
shaking hands and asked for her mother, calling the name aloud in the
silent house, deserted for the sake of the hospitals lower down. She was
walking again on and on over the hot bricks, and the deep wounds were
opening before her eyes while the surgeons went by with dripping hands.
Once she started up and cried out that the terrible blue sky was crushing
her down to the pavement which burned her feet. Then the odour of the
magnolia filled her nostrils, and she talked of the scorching dust, of the
noise that would not stop, and of the feeble breeze that blew toward her
from the river. All night she wandered back and forth in the broad glare of
the noon, and all night Mammy Riah passed from the clinging hands to the
window where she looked for help in the empty street.
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