She bent closer, laying her hand on his arm and calling him by name. He
did not move. She spoke again more loudly; she grasped his shoulder and
gently shook it. He lay motionless. She caught hold of his hand again: it
slipped from her limply, like a dead thing. A dead thing? ... Her breath
caught. She must see his face. She leaned forward, and hurriedly,
shrinkingly, with a sickening reluctance of the flesh, laid her hands on
his shoulders and turned him over. His head fell back; his face looked
small and smooth; he gazed at her with steady eyes.

She remained motionless for a long time, holding him thus; and they looked
at each other. Suddenly she shrank back: the longing to scream, to call
out, to fly from him, had almost overpowered her. But a strong hand
arrested her. Good God! If it were known that he was dead they would be
put off the train at the next station--

In a terrifying flash of remembrance there arose before her a scene she
had once witnessed in travelling, when a husband and wife, whose child had
died in the train, had been thrust out at some chance station. She saw
them standing on the platform with the child's body between them; she had
never forgotten the dazed look with which they followed the receding
train. And this was what would happen to her. Within the next hour she
might find herself on the platform of some strange station, alone with her
husband's body.... Anything but that! It was too horrible--She quivered
like a creature at bay.

As she cowered there, she felt the train moving more slowly. It was coming
then--they were approaching a station! She saw again the husband and wife
standing on the lonely platform; and with a violent gesture she drew down
the shade to hide her husband's face.