'
'Always in the same way?'
'Ay.'
'In the way in which it was really made at last?'
'Ay.'
'And always took the same pleasure in harping on it?'
'Ay.'
For the time he appears unequal to any other reply than this lazy
monosyllabic assent. Probably to assure herself that it is not the
assent of a mere automaton, she reverses the form of her next
sentence.
'Did you never get tired of it, deary, and try to call up something
else for a change?'
He struggles into a sitting posture, and retorts upon her: 'What
do you mean? What did I want? What did I come for?'
She gently lays him back again, and before returning him the
instrument he has dropped, revives the fire in it with her own
breath; then says to him, coaxingly:
'Sure, sure, sure! Yes, yes, yes! Now I go along with you. You
was too quick for me. I see now. You come o' purpose to take the
journey. Why, I might have known it, through its standing by you
so.'
He answers first with a laugh, and then with a passionate setting
of his teeth: 'Yes, I came on purpose. When I could not bear my
life, I came to get the relief, and I got it. It WAS one! It WAS
one!' This repetition with extraordinary vehemence, and the snarl
of a wolf.
She observes him very cautiously, as though mentally feeling her
way to her next remark. It is: 'There was a fellow-traveller,
deary.'
'Ha, ha, ha!' He breaks into a ringing laugh, or rather yell.
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