"I am not ill," I said. "Speak to me again."
She was pressing my hand now, I saw her bending over me, I felt her hair
as it brushed my face. She spoke again. There was a tremor in her
voice, and to that alone I listened. The words were decisive, of
command, and with them some sense as of a haven near came to me. Another
voice answered in a strange tongue, saying seemingly:--
"Oui, Madame--male couri--bon dje--male couri!"
I heard the doors close, and the sound of footsteps running and dying
along the banquette, and after that my shoulders were raised and
something wrapped about them. Then stillness again, the stillness that
comes between waking and sleeping, between pain and calm. And at times
when I felt her hand fall into mine or press against my brow, the pain
seemed more endurable. After that I recall being lifted, being borne
along. I opened my eyes once and saw, above a tile-crowned wall, the
moon all yellow and distorted in the sky. Then a gate clicked, dungeon
blackness, half-light again, ascent, oblivion.
CHAPTER XII
VISIONS, AND AN AWAKENING
I have still sharp memories of the tortures of that illness, though it
befell so long ago. At times, when my mind was gone from me, I cried out
I know not what of jargon, of sentiment, of the horrors I had beheld in
my life.
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