"Edward Bellamy. Lookimg Backward From 2000 to 1887" - читать интересную книгу автора

Perhaps she involuntarily held out her hands in a gesture of
compassion as she spoke. At any rate I had caught them in my
own and was clinging to them with an impulse as instinctive as
that which prompts the drowning man to seize upon and cling
to the rope which is thrown him as he sinks for the last time. As
I looked up into her compassionate face and her eyes moist with
pity, my brain ceased to whirl. The tender human sympathy
which thrilled in the soft pressure of her fingers had brought me
the support I needed. Its effect to calm and soothe was like that
of some wonder-working elixir.

"God bless you," I said, after a few moments. "He must have
sent you to me just now. I think I was in danger of going crazy
if you had not come." At this the tears came into her eyes.

"Oh, Mr. West!" she cried. "How heartless you must have
thought us! How could we leave you to yourself so long! But it is
over now, is it not? You are better, surely."

"Yes," I said, "thanks to you. If you will not go away quite
yet, I shall be myself soon."

"Indeed I will not go away," she said, with a little quiver of
her face, more expressive of her sympathy than a volume of
words. "You must not think us so heartless as we seemed in
leaving you so by yourself. I scarcely slept last night, for thinking
how strange your waking would be this morning; but father said
you would sleep till late. He said that it would be better not to
show too much sympathy with you at first, but to try to divert
your thoughts and make you feel that you were among friends."

"You have indeed made me feel that," I answered. "But you
see it is a good deal of a jolt to drop a hundred years, and
although I did not seem to feel it so much last night, I have had
very odd sensations this morning." While I held her hands and
kept my eyes on her face, I could already even jest a little at my
plight.

"No one thought of such a thing as your going out in the city
alone so early in the morning," she went on. "Oh, Mr. West,
where have you been?"

Then I told her of my morning's experience, from my first
waking till the moment I had looked up to see her before me,
just as I have told it here. She was overcome by distressful pity
during the recital, and, though I had released one of her hands,
did not try to take from me the other, seeing, no doubt, how
much good it did me to hold it. "I can think a little what this
feeling must have been like," she said. "It must have been
terrible. And to think you were left alone to struggle with it!