Had he been trying to stop the grim descent, and had he dimly perceived that perhaps a fine deed would serve as the initial barrier?
A drunken idea--a pearl in the midst of a rubbish heap.
That terrible laughter, just before his senses had left him! Why?
Here was a word that volleyed at her from all directions, numbed and bewildered her: the multiple echoes of her own first utterance of the word.

Why wasn't the world full of love, when love made happiness?
Why did people hide their natural kindliness as if it were something shameful?
Why shouldn't people say what they thought and act as they were inclined?
Why all this pother about what one's neighbour thought, when this pother was not energized by any good will?
Why was truth avoided as the plague?
Why did this young man have one name on the hotel register and another on his lips?
Why was she bothering about him at all?
Why should there be this inexplicable compassion, when the normal sensation should have been repellance?
Sidney Carton.

Was that it?
Had she clothed this unhappy young man with glamour?
Or was it because he was so alone?
She could not get through the husks to the kernel of what really actuated her.
Somewhere in the world would be his people, perhaps his mother; and it might soften the bitterness, of the return to consciousness if he found a woman at his bedside.

More than this, it would serve to mitigate her own abysmal loneliness to pool it temporarily with his.
She drew up a chair and sat down, putting her palm on the damp, cold forehead.

A bad sign; it signified that the heart action was in a precarious state.