To let her die, and with her their youth of belief out of which her bright, betrayed words foamed; stained words, that on her working lips came stainless.
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Hours yet before Jeannie's turn. He could press the buzzer and wake her to come now; he could take a pill, and with it sleep; he could pour more brandy into his milk glass, though what he had poured was not yet touched.
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Instead he went back, checked her pulse, gently tended with his knotty fingers as Jeannie had taught.
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She was whimpering; her hand crawled across the covers for his. Compassionately he enfolded it, and with his free hand gathered up the cards again. Still was there thirst or hunger ravening in him.
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That world of their youthdark, ignorant, terrible with hate and diseasehow was it that living in it, in the midst of corruption, filth, treachery, degradation, they had not mistrusted man nor themselves; had believed so beautifully, so . . . falsely?
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''Aaah, children," he said out loud, "how we believed, how we belonged." And he yearned to package for each of the children, the grandchildren, for everyone,
that joyous certainty, that sense of mattering, of moving and being moved, of being one and indivisible with the great of the past, with all that freed, ennobled.
Package it, stand on corners, in front of stadiums and on crowded beaches, knock on doors, give it as a fabled gift.
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"And why not in cereal boxes, in soap packages?" he mocked himself. "Aah. You have taken my senses, cadaver."
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Words foamed, died unsounded. Her body writhed; she made kissing motions with her mouth. (Her lips moving as she read, pouring over the Book
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