And in that
choir--celestial and infernal--sang the jealous woman with grey cheeks
and haggard eyes, and the timorous woman, and she of the fearless face,
and the woman who could scale the stars for the creature she worshipped,
and the woman who could lie down in the mud and let the world see her
there, and the woman who had sold her soul for food, and a thin woman,
such a thin, almost transparent, wistful creature, who was facing the
thing men call with bated breath--starvation. She sang too, but, of all
these women, she was the only one the doctor could not rightly hear nor
rightly see. For she, as yet, was remote, far down the level line of that
choir, hardly perhaps one with it yet, faint of voice, dim of outline.
The doctor heard the choir sing, and then--
His mind, as the time of the darkness grew longer, continued to grow
more and more clear, until he felt thoroughly, and was able to try to
analyze its unnatural condition. Scales had fallen from him and from
his companions for him. Their bodies were clothed, their souls, their
flames, seemed stripped bare and offered to him naked. He had examined
them with this greedy, yet sane, attention and curiosity. He had led them
into the empty room and stayed with them there.
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