Just a handshake, yet it told Adams in some majestic way, that the man on the bed knew that all was up with him, and that this was good-bye.
Berselius then spoke for a while to Maxine on indifferent things. He did not mention his wife’s name, and he spoke in a cold and abstracted voice. He seemed to Adams as though he were looking at death, perfectly serenely, and with that level gaze which never in this world had been lowered before man or brute.
Then he said he was tired, and wished to sleep.
Maxine rose, but the woman in her had to speak. She took the hand on the coverlet, and Berselius, who was just dozing off, started awake again.
“Ah!” said he, as though he had forgotten something, then he raised the little hand of Maxine and touched it with his lips.
Then he asked that his wife should be sent to him on her return.
Alone, he closed his eyes and one might have fancied that he slept, yet every now and then his eyelids would lift, and his eyes, unveiled by drowsiness, would fix themselves on some point in the room with the intent gaze of a person who is listening; so in the forest, or on the plain, or by the cane brake had he often listened at night, motionless, gun in hand and deadly, for the tiger or the water buck.
Half an hour passed and then from the adjoining room came a footstep, the door opened gently, and Madame Berselius entered. She was dressed just as she had traveled from Vaux. She had only just arrived, to find death in the house, and as she looked at the figure on the bed she fancied she beheld it indeed.
Closing the door gently she approached the bed. No, it was not death but sleep. He was breathing evenly and rhythmically, sleeping, apparently, as peacefully as a child.
She was about to turn away when, like a bather who has ventured into some peaceful tropic rock pool wherein lurks an octopus, she found herself seized and held. Berselius’s eyes were open, he was not asleep. His gaze was fixed on hers, and he held her with his eyes as the cat holds the bird or the python the man.