I could not watch by day and night. Unless I had assistance I
would break down.

I did not think that I should. Love is stronger than that. And
on one thing I was determined--they should never take my wife
from me. No restraint sterner than a husband's loving hand
should ever be put upon her, my pretty, piteous darling.

I never spoke of the dream-child to her. The doctor advised
against it. It would, he said, only serve to deepen the
delusion. When he hinted at an asylum I gave him a look that
would have been a fierce word for another man. He never spoke of
it again.

One night in August there was a dull, murky sunset after a dead,
breathless day of heat, with not a wind stirring. The sea was
not blue as a sea should be, but pink--all pink--a ghastly,
staring, painted pink. I lingered on the harbor shore below the
house until dark. The evening bells were ringing faintly and
mournfully in a church across the harbor. Behind me, in the
kitchen, I heard my wife singing. Sometimes now her spirits were
fitfully high, and then she would sing the old songs of her
girlhood. But even in her singing was something strange, as if a
wailing, unearthly cry rang through it. Nothing about her was
sadder than that strange singing.

When I went back to the house the rain was beginning to fall; but
there was no wind or sound in the air--only that dismal
stillness, as if the world were holding its breath in expectation
of a calamity.