Next time I saw her she was dead. In our hateful English fashion, they
had shut her up in a dark room, and we had to take candles to see
her. I shall never forget the moment when my eyes first rested on that
awful snow-white sheet, so faintly indented by the fragile form
beneath, lines very fragile, but oh! so hard and cold, like the
indentations upon frozen snow; never forget my strange unaccountable
terror when he on one side and I on the other turned down the icy
sheet from her face. But terror changed to awe and reverence, as her
face came upon us with its sweet sphinx-like smile. Lying there, with
a little gold chain round her neck and a chrysanthemum in the bosom of
her night-gown, there was a curious regality about her, a look as
though she wore a crown our eyes were unable to see. And while I gazed
upon her, the sobs of my friend came across the bed, and as he called
to her I seemed to hear the eternal Orpheus calling for his lost
Eurydice. Poor lad!--poor maid! Here, naked and terrible, was all the
tragedy of the world compressed into an hour, the Medusa-face of life
that turns the bravest to stone. Surely, I felt, God owed more than He
could ever repay to these two lovers, whom it had been so easy to
leave to their simple joys. And from that night to this I can never
look upon my white bed without seeing afar off the moment when it,
too, will bear the little figure of her I love best in the world,
bound for her voyage to the Minotaur Death; just as I never put off my
clothes at night, and stretch my limbs down among the cool sheets,
without thinking of the night when I shall put off my clothes for the
last time and close my eyes for ever.

LECTOR. But, my friend, this is to feel too much; it is morbid.

SCRIPTOR. Morbid! How can one really _feel_ and not be morbid? If one