" He looked at Foster's drawn face, and
heard with surprise the rasping note in his voice. "Was it as bad as that?"
Foster drew his shade down farther over his eyes and clashed his needles
together.
"I remember how, when I was in Florence, we went out to a religious
festival one evening at some small hill-town near by. This was twenty years
ago, when I _could_ travel. There was a kind of grotto in the church,
under the high altar; and in the grotto was a full-sized figure of a dead
man, carved and painted--and covered with wounds; and round that figure
half the women and girls of the town were collected, stroking, kissing ...
Adonis all over again!"
"Oh, come, Joe; don't get morbid."
Foster lifted one shoulder.
"Well, the young fellow began by roaring through the house like a bull of
Bashan, and he ended by toppling over like a little wobbly calf."
He spoke like a man who had imagined a full measure of physical powers and
had envied them ... had been exasperated by the exuberant presentation of
them... had felt a series of contradictory emotions when they had seemed to
fail....
"It was only a moment of dizziness," said Randolph.
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