Alas! Alas!" and she flung herself prone upon the ground, and sobbed and
wept till I thought her heart must burst.

Suddenly she ceased, raised herself to her feet, rearranged her robe,
and, tossing back her long locks impatiently, swept across to where the
figure lay upon the stone.

"Oh Kallikrates," she cried, and I trembled at the name, "I must look
upon thy face again, though it be agony. It is a generation since
I looked upon thee whom I slew--slew with mine own hand," and with
trembling fingers she seized the corner of the sheet-like wrapping that
covered the form upon the stone bier, and then paused. When she spoke
again, it was in a kind of awed whisper, as though her idea were
terrible even to herself.

"Shall I raise thee," she said, apparently addressing the corpse, "so
that thou standest there before me, as of old? I _can_ do it," and she
held out her hands over the sheeted dead, while her whole frame became
rigid and terrible to see, and her eyes grew fixed and dull. I shrank in
horror behind the curtain, my hair stood up upon my head, and, whether
it was my imagination or a fact I am unable to say, but I thought that
the quiet form beneath the covering began to quiver, and the winding
sheet to lift as though it lay on the breast of one who slept. Suddenly
she withdrew her hands, and the motion of the corpse seemed to me to
cease.

"To what purpose?" she said gloomily. "Of what good is it to recall the
semblance of life when I cannot recall the spirit? Even if thou stoodest
before me thou wouldst not know me, and couldst but do what I bid thee.
The life in thee would be _my_ life, and not _thy_ life, Kallikrates."