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Show 247 her and saw she was laughing. She turned and knocked her shin against a leg of the overturned bureau. "I knew it," she mumbled, and laughed her unsettling little laugh again, that sounded like bacon frying. He held up his hands to prevent her from walking across the fragments of mirror, and she whirled away from him, losing her balance and stumbling against the foot of the bed. She gave a sharp cry and then a shriek of laughter and said, "I knew it." She reached the window at last and stood leaning her hands on the sill with her forehead pressed against the glass, breathing in great heaves, and finally turned and made for the bed. She shrank coldly from his touch as he helped her to lie down, but the gesture was feeble, as if she were too weak to care, and she didn't answer him as he sat by her side and asked if he could get her anything and wouldn't she like to close her eyes and how was she feeling now. She merely looked at him. As he backed out of the room her eyes followed him all the way to the door. Such were the details that charged the senses of seven men, one of them stricken. Lorin listened with all his ears, and wondered if menopause or epilepsy had symptoms like that. It sounded a little like what he had read of religious ecstasies, except that she hadn't appeared to enjoy it, and he was not sure there really were ecstasies. In any case Lorin knew the couple. Their faith was secure, businesslike and unexamined. It had never guttered or fallen dim, and it was unlikely ever to flame up and irradiate their testimonies. Heinmiller himself was the circulation manager of a local newspaper and worked nights bagging groceries, and if heaven contained newspaper offices and food stores he would have his reward. His wife, gone to fat but a pleasant woman, played the organ at the branch and would happily spend the eternities helping out at choir practice. Their two sons had long since left the nest and had families |