THE lamps went out; the rats came and ran across the floor; as the hours crept on through midnight and past, the cold intensified¹ and the air of the room grew like ice. August did not move; he lay with his face downward on the golden and rainbow-hued pedestal of the household treasure, which henceforth was to be cold for evermore, an exiled thing in a foreign city in a far-off land.

 

Whilst yet it was dark his three elder brothers came down the stairs and let themselves out, each bearing his lantern and going to his work in stone-yard and timber-yard and at the salt-works. They did not notice him; they did not know what had happened.

 

A little later his sister came down with a light in her hand to make ready the house ere morning should break.

 

She stole up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder timidly.

 

“Dear August, you must be frozen. August, do look up! do speak!”

 

August raised his eyes with a wild, feverish², sullen³ look in them that she had never seen there. His face was ashen⁴ white: his lips were like fire.[38] He had not slept all night; but his passionate⁵ sobs⁶ had given way to delirious⁷ waking dreams and numb⁸ senseless trances, which had alternated one on another all through the freezing, lonely, horrible hours.

 

“It will never be warm again,” he muttered, “never again!”

 

Dorothea clasped him with trembling hands.

 

“August! do you not know me?” she cried, in an agony. “I am Dorothea. Wake up, dear—wake up! It is morning, only so dark!”

 

August

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