No doubt it was well packed away in
his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard
from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that
dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head like
the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there wasn't any
fog left. He didn't go on--he didn't last long. It was not many
sentence's after his first before he began to hesitate, and break, and
lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down in a
limp and mushy pile.
Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than
one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man
hadn't strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so
stupefied, paralyzed; it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or
even try. Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells
mournfully, and without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and
supported us out of the room. It was very kind--he was most generous.
He towed us tottering away into same room in that building, and we sat
down there.
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