"Dr. Conroy!"—it seemed a familiar name to the Madam. "I wonder if he wants a subject? Show him up, Corkins."
Through the bowed window-shutters and the drawn curtains, the winter sunlight stole into the chamber of Alice, lighting up the bed, and touching with a few golden rays the face of the Virgin Mary on the wall.
Herman and Godiva stood by the bed, their backs toward the window, and their faces from the light. They did not speak. The room was breathlessly still.
Alice was there, resting on the bed, the coverlet drawn up to her neck, and her cheek pressed against the pillow, thus turning her face to the light. One hand and arm lay motionless on the coverlet, and her sunny hair strayed in unbound luxuriance over the pillow. Her eyes were closed; her lips slightly parted; her cheek pale as the pillow on which she slept: for she was sleeping. A bright ray, that found entrance through an aperture in the curtains, was playing over her face, now on her lips, now on her throat, and among the waves of her silken hair. The sight was so beautiful that Godiva, whose heart had long since ceased to feel, was awed into silence. As for Herman, he could not take his eyes away, but stood there with his gaze chained to the face of the sleeping girl; for she was sleeping—sleeping that dear, quiet sleep, which, in this world, never knows an awakening hour. In the language of the woman-fiend, she indeed "was well!" Dead, with the second life which she bore, dead within her. Poor Alice! She had only opened her wings in the world, to fold them again and die.
"Herman," whispered Godiva, "look at that! Are you not proud of your work?"
"Don't taunt me, Marion," he answered. "Had I never met you—had you never made my life but one continued dream of sensuality—I would not stand here at this hour, gazing upon this murdered girl."
"Sweet boy! And so, when I first met you, you believed all that you preached in the pulpit?"
"If I did not believe it, I certainly did not wish to doubt it. You, and the life I've led since first I knew you, have made me dread the very mention of the existence of a God, or of the immortality of the soul."
"Pretty boy! How sadly I've used you! But don't call me Marion again;—that name I left in the grave. Leave off preaching, and let us see what you intend to do?"