A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women, and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted… When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrates ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out… and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago.
He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. “It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!” As the concentrating expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her. “She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out—she had a fear of my going, though I had none—and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. ‘You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.’ Those were the words I said. I remember them very well.”
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