Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1902-04-19

plain dull outline. Her clay-cold lips
were so white that one sighed to re-
member the full beauty of their car
mine. Her shoulders and neck had
lost their comely curves, and made
bony hollows now in which the dust
of entombment lodged black and
thickly.
Reverently l set about preparing
those things which if all went well
would restore her. / heated water and
filed bath, and tinctured it heavily
with those essences of the life of
beasts which the priests extract and
store against times of urgent need
and sickness. I laid her chin-deep in
this bath, and sat beside it to watch,
maintaining that bath at constant
blood heat.
An hour I watched; two hours [
watched; three hours-and yet she
showed no flicker of life. The heat
of her body given her by the bath was
the same as the heat of my own. But
in the feel of her skin when 1 stroked
it with my hand there was something
lacking still. Only when our Lord the
Sun rose for his day did 1 break off
my watching, while l said the neces-
sary prayer which is prescribed, and
quickly returned again to the gloom
of the house.
1t is hard to take note of small
changes which occur with infinite slow
ness when one is all the while on the
tense watch, and, high-strung though
my senses were, / think there must
have been some indication of return
ing life shown before [ was keen
enough to notice it. For of sudden,
as l gazed, saw faint ripping on the
surface of the water of the bath. Gods!
would it come back again to my love
at last-this life, this wakefulness?
The ripple died out as it had come,
and 1 stopped my head nearer to the
bath to try if 1 could see some faint
heaving of her bosom, some small
twitching of the limbs. No, she lay
there still without even a futter of
movement. But as l watched, surely
it seemed to my aching eyes that some
tinge was beginning to warm that
blank whiteness of skin?
How l filled myself with that sight.
The color was returning to her again
beyond doubt. Once more the dried
blood was becoming fluid and begin
ming again to course in its old chan
nels. Her hair foated out in the liquid
of the bath like some brown tangle of
the ocean weed, and ever and again it
twitched and eddied to some impulse
which in itself was too small for the
eye to see.
She had slept for nine long years,
and | knew that the Weakening could
be none of the suddenest. Indeed, it
came by its own gradations and with
infinite slowness, and I did not dare
do more to hasten It. Further drugs
might very we'll stop eternally what
those which had been used already had
begun. So / sat motionless where I
was, and watched the color come back,
and the waxenness go, and even the
fullness of her curves in some small
measure return. And when growing
strength gave her power to endure
them, and she was racked with those
pains which are inevitable to being
borne back gain in this fashion to life,
/, too, felt the reflex of her agony, and
writhed in loving sympathy.
Still further, too, was l wrung by a
torment of doubt as to whe Their life or
these rackings would in the end be
conqueror. After each paroxysm the
color ebbed back from her again, and
for awhile she would lie motionless
But strength and power seemed grad
ually to grow, and It last these pre-
vailed, and drove death and sleep be-
meath them. Her eyelids struggled
with their fastenings. Her lips part
ed, and her bosom heayed. With shiv-
ering gasps her breath began to pant
between her reddening lips. At first
it ratified dryly in her throat, but soon
it softened and became more regular.