‘I mean that we’re both dead now. It’s not so very bad—is it?’
‘Nonsense, Charley!’ I returned; ‘I’m not dead. I’m as wide alive as ever I was. Look here.’
So saying, I sprung to my feet, and drew myself up before him.
‘Where’s your worst pain?’ said Charley, with a curious expression in his tone.
‘Here,’ I answered. ‘No; it’s not; it’s in my back. No, it isn’t. It’s nowhere. I haven’t got any pain.’
Charley laughed a low laugh, which sounded as sweet as strange. It was to the laughter of the world ‘as moonlight is to sunlight,’ but not ‘as water is to wine,’ for what it had lost in sound it had gained in smile.
‘Tell me now you’re not dead!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.
‘But,’ I insisted, ‘don’t you see I’m alive? You may be dead for anything I know—but I am not—I know that.’
‘You’re just as dead as I am,’ he said. ‘Look here.’
A little way off, in an open plot by itself, stood a little white rose tree, half mingled with the moonlight. Charley went up to it, stepped on the topmost twig, and stood: the bush did not even bend under him.