All at once Leopold sat straight up, his eyes fixed and flaming, his
face white: he looked like a corpse possessed by a spirit of fear
and horror. Helen's heart swelled into her throat, the muscles of
her face contracted with irresistible rigor, and she felt it grow
exactly like his, while with wide eyes she stared at him, and he
stared at something which lest she also should see, she dared not
turn her head. Surely, she thought afterwards, she must have been
that moment in the presence of something unearthly! Her physical
being was wrenched from her control, and she must simply sit and
wait until the power or influence, whichever it might be, should
pass away. How long it was ere it relaxed its hold she could not
tell; it could not have been long, she thought. Suddenly the light
sank from Leopold's eyes, his muscles relaxed, he fell back
motionless, apparently senseless, on the pillow, and she thought he
was dead. The same moment she was free; the horror had departed from
her own atmosphere too, and she made haste to restore him. But in
all she did for him, she felt like the executioner who gives
restoratives to the wretch that has fainted on the rack or the
wheel. What right had SHE, she thought, to multiply to him his
moments of torture? If the cruel power that had created him for such
misery, whoever, whatever, wherever he might be, chose thus to
torture him, was she, his only friend, out of the selfish affection
he had planted in her, to lend herself his tool? Yet she hesitated
not a single moment in her ministrations.
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