Heriot: she resisted a more powerful advocate, and this was the princess
Ottilia. My aunt Dorothy told me that the princess had written. Janet
either did or affected to weigh the princess's reasonings; and she did
not evade the task of furnishing a full reply.

Her resolution was unchanged. Loss of colour, loss of light in her eyes,
were the sole signs of what it cost her to maintain it. Our task was to
transfer the idea of Janet to that of Julia in my father's whirling
brain, which at first rebelled violently, and cast it out like a stick
thrust between rapidly revolving wheels.

The night before I was to take him away, she gave me her hand with a
'good-bye, dear Harry.' My words were much the same. She had a ghastly
face, but could not have known it, for she smiled, and tried to keep the
shallow smile in play, as friends do. There was the end.

It came abruptly, and was schoolingly cold and short.

It had the effect on me of freezing my blood and setting what seemed to
be the nerves of my brain at work in a fury of calculation to reckon the
minutes remaining of her maiden days. I had expected nothing, but now we
had parted I thought that one last scene to break my heart on should not
have been denied to me. My aunt Dorothy was a mute; she wept when I
spoke of Janet, whatever it was I said.

The minutes ran on from circumstance to circumstance of the destiny Janet
had marked for herself, each one rounded in my mind of a blood colour
like the edge about prismatic hues. I lived through them a thousand
times before they occurred, as the wretch who fears death dies
multitudinously.