difference. Septimius could not get beyond the earthiness; his feeling was
as if, by an act of violence, he had forever cut off a happy human
existence. And such was his own love of life and clinging to it, peculiar
to dark, sombre natures, and which lighter and gayer ones can never know,
that he shuddered at his deed, and at himself, and could with difficulty
bear to be alone with the corpse of his victim,--trembled at the thought
of turning his face towards him.

Yet he did so, because he could not endure the imagination that the dead
youth was turning his eyes towards him as he lay; so he came and stood
beside him, looking down into his white, upturned face. But it was
wonderful! What a change had come over it since, only a few moments ago,
he looked at that death-contorted countenance! Now there was a high and
sweet expression upon it, of great joy and surprise, and yet a quietude
diffused throughout, as if the peace being so very great was what had
surprised him. The expression was like a light gleaming and glowing within
him. Septimius had often, at a certain space of time after sunset, looking
westward, seen a living radiance in the sky,--the last light of the dead
day that seemed just the counterpart of this death-light in the young
man's face. It was as if the youth were just at the gate of heaven, which,
swinging softly open, let the inconceivable glory of the blessed city
shine upon his face, and kindle it up with gentle, undisturbing
astonishment and purest joy. It was an expression contrived by God's
providence to comfort; to overcome all the dark auguries that the physical
ugliness of death inevitably creates, and to prove by the divine glory on
the face, that the ugliness is a delusion. It was as if the dead man
himself showed his face out of the sky, with heaven's blessing on it, and
bade the afflicted be of good cheer, and believe in immortality.

Septimius remembered the young man's injunctions to bury him there, on the