She stared straight at us without appearing to see us.

We spoke to her, and she never answered a word.

She might have been dead--like her husband--except that she perpetually picked at her fingers, and shuddered every now and then as if she was cold.

I went to her and tried to lift her up.

She shrank back with a cry that well-nigh frightened me--not because it was loud, but because it was more like the cry of some animal than of a human being.