Page:Restless Earth.djvu/7
to be easy. Writing it had been difficult enough—posting it would be yet more difficult. And yet there was no other way, no other honorable way.
Perhaps, when he had rid himself of the thing he would feel better. The irrevocable step would have been taken. . . .
February 3rd, 1931.
“Dear Grace,
I have tried—God knows I have tried—to tear Pat from my thoughts and from my heart. In these lonely weeks I have fought desperately to recapture the contentment which I have known so long; and now I know the fight is hopeless. I don’t know what has become . . . .”
A strange nausea seized him when he had read so far. The letter fluttered from his fingers. He leaned forward and covered his eyes with his hands. He felt himself swaying in his chair. His heart seemed to shudder and rise into his throat. His brain seemed to swim with a curious rotary movement.
He diagnosed the trouble, and smiled grimly.
“Starvation. No regular meals since Grace left.”
The nausea and the swaying increased, and it flashed across Harley’s mind that he might die of starvation if the present state of affairs continued.
“Might be the best way out,” he muttered.
The crash of breaking crockery in the kitchenette caused him to raise his head, and the explanation of his nausea became instantly apparent.
The pine trees in the park were swaying, the power lines and telephone wires on the posts in the roadway were swinging—and there was no wind.
Earthquake!
As he scrambled to his feet a number of books fell from the shelves in the corner of the room and a metal vase clanged upon the hearth-tiles.
The earth movement increased steadily. The house protested in a hundred creaks and rattles.