"Don't open it; don't open it! Let us pass away from your sight for ever."
Mellen caught her arm and pulled her roughly away.
"You shall not touch the dead," she cried; "kill me but do not commit sacrilege."
Elizabeth struggled on to her knees, and wound her arms about him in a convulsive grasp: he shook her off with loathing, as if a poisonous reptile had brushed his garments.
North stood with an evil light in his eyes, looking on Mellen, snatched the spade from his grasp, and while a despairing cry died on Elizabeth's lips, dashed it upon the cover; again and again, till the frail board split, revealing a gleam of white underneath.
Elizabeth was lying on the ground—not insensible; no such blessed relief came to her—but incapable of a movement; watching her husband always with those insane eyes.
His passion had exhausted itself in this sacrilegious violence, and he stood over the shattered box, struck with remorseful awe. But the wind swept over it, lifting some folds of transparent muslin from a little face that Elizabeth had seen night and day in her thoughts and her dreams, since the dreadful night when that grave was dug under the cypress tree.
She saw the face; saw her husband looking down upon it; saw all the shuddering horror in his eyes. Still she could not move.
"This has been a murder!" he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I swear that the guilty ones, even if my own name is dragged down to infamy with them, shall be brought to judgment."
"No, no," she moaned; "not murder; not that."