Roma continued to say "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes," though her very heart felt sore.
Two hours afterwards the Countess was in her death agony. The tortured body had prevailed over the rapturous soul, and she was calling for more and more of the opiate. Everybody was odious to her, and her angular face was snapping all round.
The priest came to say the prayers for the dying. It was near to sunset, but the shutters were still closed, and the room had a grim solemnity. A band was playing on the Pincio, and the strains of an opera mingled with the petitions of the "breathing forth."
Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.
The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesù, Gesù, Gesù!"
The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and the priest was praying fast and loud:
"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into the bosom of Abraham."
At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in her chest. At last she became delirious.
"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.
The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."