Herself. And now Louis. Just once. Just one more
little grave--
And Alma, answering her somewhere down in her heartbeats: "No, mamma.
No, mamma! No! No! No!"
But all the little pores gaping. Mouths! The pinching up of the skin.
Here, this little clean and white area.
"No, mamma! No, mamma! No! No! No!"
"Just once, darling?" Oh--oh--little graves for Alma and Louis. No! No!
No!
Somehow, some way, with all the little mouths still parched and gaping
and the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found her
back to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and the
conflagration of neuralgia, curiously enough, was now roaring in her
ears so that it seemed to her she could hear her pain.
Her daughter lay asleep, with her face to the wall, her flowing hair
spread in a fan against the pillow and her body curled up cozily. The
remaining hours of the night, in a kind of waking faint she could never
find the words to describe, Mrs. Samstag, with that dreadful dew of her
sweat constantly out over her, lay with her twisted lips to the faint
perfume of that fan of Alma's flowing hair, her toes curling in and out.
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