"No. Why do you ask?"
"You look dreadfully pale." He only smiled at this remark—but it was a ghastly smile.
"I know that something is the matter," I cried. "What is it, Forrester?"
"Nothing. What can be the matter? Are we not all living men talking upon equal terms, and in the best possible humor, about the dead? Why should that affect me more than any body else?"
"I know not why it should," I replied, "but I feel it does."
"Are you quite sure," he returned, in a low voice, "that it does not affect you as deeply?" He looked at me as if he knew my whole life, which he could not have known; and, in spite of a violent effort to suppress my feelings, I was conscious that I betrayed the agitation into which I was thrown by that searching look.
"Come, come," he exclaimed, rallying wildly, "we have both looked death in the face before now; and although use can not make it familiar, still a sight often repeated must lose some of its horrors."
"No, you are wrong. I have not seen death often."
"Once—only once," he replied, in the same hollow voice; "but you have seen many deaths in one."
"How do you know that?" I demanded; "or assume to know it?"