Antonia "what are you sitting there for, as dumb as a post? Aren't you coming to bed?"
"No, I—I am not sleepy," she temporized, with her teeth chattering.
"What if you aren't sleepy? Are you going to sit up all night?"
"No,—no,—there isn't room. You go to sleep. I'll get on here, some way or other."
He uttered two or three coarse words.
"Are you afraid of me, do you hate me, or what on earth is the trouble? We'll see whether you aren't coming to bed! If you don't—"
He sat up, reached out his hands, and prepared to spring from the bed to the floor. But Antonia, with the fatalistic docility of a slave, had already begun to undress. Her hurrying fingers broke the strings, violently tore off the hooks and eyes, ripped her skirts and petticoats bate. In one corner of the room could still be heard the smothered sobbing of the boy.
It was the boy who summoned the neighbors the following morning by his desperate cries. They found Antonia still in bed, stretched out as if dead. A doctor, summoned in haste, declared that she was still alive, and bled her, but he could not draw from her one drop of blood. She passed away at noon, by a natural death, for there was no mark of violence upon her. The boy insisted that the man who had passed the night there had called her several times to get up, and seeing that she didn't answer, had gone away, running like a madman.
