He moved a step nearer. Her face was turned to the pillow; but he could see the rounded outline of her cheek, and it struck him that she looked strangely pale. His heart gave a great throb; his breath came short; a nameless terror—a terror of he knew not what—fell suddenly upon him.
"Ethel!" he repeated. "My darling—my darling!"
He sprang to the bedside—he hung over her—he touched her hand, her cheek, her neck—then uttered one wild, despairing cry, and staggered back against the wall.
She was dead.
Not fainting. No; not even in the first horror of that moment did he deceive himself with so vain a hope. She was dead, and he knew that she was dead. He knew it with as full and fixed a sense of conviction as if he had been prepared for it by months of anxiety. He did not ask himself why it was so. He did not ask himself by what swift and cruel disease—by what mysterious accident, this dread thing had come to pass. He only knew that she was dead; and that all the joy, the hope, the glory of life was gone from him for ever.
A long time, or what seemed like a long time, went by thus; he leaning up against the wall, voiceless, tearless, paralysed, unable to think, or move, or do anything but stare in a blank, lost way at the bed on which lay the wreck of his happiness.
By-and-by—it might have been half an hour or an hour later—he became dimly conscious of a sound of lamentation; of the presence of many persons in the room; of being led away like a child, and placed in a chair beside an open window; and of Margherita kneeling at his feet and covering his hands with tears. Then, as one who has been stunned by some murderous blow, he recovered by degrees from his stupor.
"Salimbeni," he said, hoarsely.
It was the first word he had spoken.
"We have sent for him, Signore," sobbed Margherita. "But—but—"