Dennin lay without
movement. The overturned chair, hurled onward in the mad whirl,
lay near him. Partly under him lay the shot-gun, still broken open
at the breech. Spilling out of his right hand were the two
cartridges which he had failed to put into the gun and which he had
clutched until consciousness left him. Harkey lay on the floor,
face downward, where he had fallen; while Dutchy rested forward on
the table, his yellow mop of hair buried in his mush-plate, the
plate itself still tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. This
tilted plate fascinated her. Why did it not fall down? It was
ridiculous. It was not in the nature of things for a mush-plate to
up-end itself on the table, even if a man or so had been killed.
She glanced back at Dennin, but her eyes returned to the tilted
plate. It was so ridiculous! She felt a hysterical impulse to
laugh. Then she noticed the silence, and forgot the plate in a
desire for something to happen. The monotonous drip of the coffee
from the table to the floor merely emphasized the silence. Why did
not Hans do something? say something? She looked at him and was
about to speak, when she discovered that her tongue refused its
wonted duty.
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