She is dead!—quite dead! Already the limbs are stiffening, the hands are icy cold, the lips, that in life would so gladly have returned kiss for kiss, are now silent and motionless beneath the despairing caresses he lavishes upon them in the vain hope of finding yet some warmth remaining.
But there is none. She is gone, past recall, past hearing all expressions of remorseful tenderness. In the terrible lonely dawn she had passed away, with no one near to hold her dying hand, without a sigh or moan, leaving no farewell word of love or forgiveness to the man who is now straining her lifeless body to his heart, as though to make one last final effort to bring her back to earth.
There is a happy smile upon her lips, her eyes are quite closed, almost she seems as one that sleepeth. The awful majesty of death is upon her, and no voice of earth, however anguished and imploring, can reach her ice-bound heart. As the first faint touch of light that came to usher in her wedding morn broke upon the earth, she had died, and gone somewhere
"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"—Milton.
The two months that Dorian has given himself in which to finish the business that, he said, had brought him home, have almost come to an end. Already winter is passing out of mind, and "Spring comes up this way."
The "checkered daffodil" and the soft plaintive primrose are bursting into bloom. The gentle rain comes with a passing cloud, and sinks lovingly into the earth's bosom and into the hearts of the opening buds.
The grass is springing; all the world is rich with fresh young life. The very snowdrops—pale blossoms, born of bitter winds and sunless skies—have perished out of sight.