And I seemed to hear her voice intone the words as I had heard them from her lips so many times.
And then my eyes fell—on her! Aye! On her, stretched at full length in her warm and glorious tomb. For above her mortal remains slept her effigy wrought with all the skill of a great art.
I had feared to look upon it, but having looked, I felt that I could never tear myself away from its peace and loveliness.
The long folds of the drapery fell straight from the small, round throat to the tiny unshod feet, and so wonderfully was it wrought, that it seemed as if the living beautiful flesh of the slender body was still quick beneath it. The exquisite hands that I knew so well—so delicate, and yet so strong—were gently crossed upon her breast, and her arms held a long stemmed lily, emblem of purity, and it looked to me there like a martyr's palm.
Perhaps it was the pale reflection from the red walls, but the figure seemed too real to be mere stone!
I forgot the irony of the fact that I was merely seeing her through his eyes—the eyes of the man who had robbed me. I felt only her presence. I fell on my knees. I flung my arms across the beautiful form—no colder to my embrace than had been the living woman! As I recoiled from the death-like touch, my eyes fell on the words carved on the face of the sarcophagus, and once more, it was like the voice that was hushed in my ears.
"I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye
While the dim sheeted ghosts go by."
"Amen," I said, with all my heart, to the words he had carved above her, for what, after the fever of such a life, could be so welcome to her as dreamless, eternal silence, in which there would be no more passion, no more struggling, no more love?
And, if I wished with all my soul, that the great surprise of death might, for her, have been peace and silence, did I not bar myself as well as him from the hope of Heaven?