[Atlantic Monthly, 1911.]
Akron
She has been dead these thirty days.
Empedocles
How say you, thirty days! and there is no feature of corruption?
Akron
None. She has the marble signature of death writ in her whole fair frame. She lies upon her ivory bed, robed in the soft stuffs of Tyre, as if new-cut from Pentelikon by Phidias, or spread upon the wood by the magic brush of Zeuxis, seeming as much alive as this, no more, no less. There is no beat of heart nor slightest heave of breast.
Empedocles
And have you made the tests of death?
Akron