“It is the most terrible thing in likenesses I have ever seen,” the woman continued slowly. “When you entered the room a few seconds ago, it seemed to me that a miracle had happened. It seemed to me that the dead had come to life.”
“It must have been a shock,” the man murmured, with his eyes upon the tablecloth.
“It was,” she agreed, hoarsely. “Can't you see it in my face? I do not always look like a woman of forty. Can't you see the gray shadows that are there? You see, I admit it frankly. I was terrified—I am terrified!”
“And why?” he asked.
“Why?” she repeated, looking at him wonderingly. “Doesn't it seem to you a terrible thing to think of the dead coming back to life?”
He tapped lightly upon the tablecloth for a minute with the fingers of one hand. Then he looked at her again.
“It depends,” he said, “upon the manner of their death.”
An executioner of the Middle Ages could not have played with his victim more skillfully. The woman was shivering now, preserving some outward appearance of calm only by the most fierce and unnatural effort.
“What do you mean by that, Jerry?” she asked. “I was not even with—Wenham, when he was lost. You know all about it, I suppose,—how it happened?”
The man nodded thoughtfully.