Sometimes I seemed to feel his spirit grappling with mine,
drawing me back from the verge. Sometimes, in strange dreams, I saw him
there between me and a dark, cold, sinister shape.
The fever passed, and with the first nourishing drink given me I seemed
to find my tongue, to gain something.
"Hello, old man," I whispered to Steele.
"Oh, Lord, Russ, to think you would double-cross me the way you did!"
That was his first speech to me after I had appeared to face round from
the grave. His good-humored reproach told me more than any other thing
how far from his mind was thought of death for me. Then he talked a
little to me, cheerfully, with that directness and force characteristic
of him always, showing me that the danger was past, and that I would now
be rapidly on the mend. I discovered that I cared little whether I was
on the mend or not. When I had passed the state of somber unrealities
and then the hours of pain and then that first inspiring flush of
renewed desire to live, an entirely different mood came over me. But I
kept it to myself. I never even asked why, for three days, Sally never
entered the room where I lay. I associated this fact, however, with what
I had imagined her shrinking from me, her intent and pale face, her
singular manner when occasion made it necessary or unavoidable for her
to be near me.
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