Mr. Piper looked up and for a second of relief Oliver thought that the
staring eyes had not recognized him at all. Then he realized from the look
in them that who or what he was made singularly little difference now to
Mr. Piper. "Water!" croaked Mr. Piper. "Water! I've shot her. Oh, poor
Rose, poor Rose!" and he was plucking at her dress again with absorbed,
incapable fingers.
Oliver looked around him. The gun. There must have been a gun. Where? Oh
_there_--and as he picked it up from under a chair he did so with much
inward reverence in spite of the haste he took to it, for he felt as if it
were all the next forty years of his life made little into something cold
and small and of metal that he was lifting like a doll from the floor.
"Water," said Mr. Piper again and quite horribly. "Water for Rose."
It was only when he had gone back to the kitchen and started looking for
glasses that he realized that Mrs. Severance might very possibly be dying
out there in the other room. Till then the mere fact that he was not dying
himself had been too large in his vision to give him time to develop proper
sympathy for others.
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