XXVII -- GRIEF

LATE the following evening I thought I would like to look at her once
more; so, conquering an involuntary sense of fear, I gently opened the
door of the salon and entered on tiptoe.

In the middle of the room, on a table, lay the coffin, with wax candles
burning all round it on tall silver candelabra. In the further corner
sat the chanter, reading the Psalms in a low, monotonous voice. I
stopped at the door and tried to look, but my eyes were so weak with
crying, and my nerves so terribly on edge, that I could distinguish
nothing. Every object seemed to mingle together in a strange blur--the
candles, the brocade, the velvet, the great candelabra, the pink satin
cushion trimmed with lace, the chaplet of flowers, the ribboned cap, and
something of a transparent, wax-like colour. I mounted a chair to see
her face, yet where it should have been I could see only that wax-like,
transparent something. I could not believe it to be her face. Yet, as
I stood grazing at it, I at last recognised the well-known, beloved
features. I shuddered with horror to realise that it WAS she. Why were
those eyes so sunken? What had laid that dreadful paleness upon her
cheeks, and stamped the black spot beneath the transparent skin on one
of them? Why was the expression of the whole face so cold and severe?
Why were the lips so white, and their outline so beautiful, so majestic,
so expressive of an unnatural calm that, as I looked at them, a chill
shudder ran through my hair and down my back?

Somehow, as I gazed, an irrepressible, incomprehensible power seemed