"Why isn't
the punkah-man at work?"
"The 'punkah-man' has bolted with the rest of them," Mrs. Carmichael
answered. "I dare say I could work it, though I have never tried."
"It is hardly worth while to begin now," Beatrice observed, and this
simple acknowledgment that the end was at hand received no
contradiction.
Once again the silence was unbroken, save for the soft swish of the
fan and Mrs. Cary's heavy, irregular breathing. Yet the five women who
in the full swing of their life had been diametrically opposed to one
another were now united in a common sympathy. Death, far more than a
leveler of class, is the melting-pot into which are thrown all
antagonisms, all violent discords of character. The one great fact
overshadows everything, and the petty stumbling-blocks of daily life
are forgotten. More than that still--it is the supreme moment in man's
existence when the innermost treasures or unsuspected hells are
revealed beyond all denial. And in these five women, hidden in two
cases at least beneath a mass of meanness, selfishness and
indifference, there lay an unusual power of self-sacrifice and pity.
Death was drawing near to them all, and their one thought was how to
make his coming easier for the other. When the silence grew
unbearable, it was Mrs. Carmichael who had the courage to break it
with a trivial criticism respecting the manner in which Lois was
making the sandwiches.
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