The Fourth Quarter
“To desperation! Learn it from the creature dearest to your heart!”
A hundred voices echoed it. The air was made of breath expended in those words. He seemed to take them in at every gasp he drew. They were everywhere, and not to be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same light in her eyes, the same words in her mouth, “Like Lilian! To be changed like Lilian!”
All at once she stopped.
“Now, turn her back!” exclaimed the old man, tearing his white hair. “My child! Meg! Turn her back! Great Father, turn her back!”
In her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm. With her fevered hands she smoothed its limbs, composed its face, arranged its mean attire. In her wasted arms she folded it, as though she never would resign it more. And with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and last long agony of Love. Putting its tiny hand up to her neck, holding it there, within her dress, next to her distracted heart, she set its sleeping face against her: closely, steadily, against her: and sped onward to the River.
To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had the banks gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as torches that were burning there, to show the way to Death. Where no abode of living people cast its shadow on the deep, impenetrable, melancholy shade.
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