ue. Perfection! A
pitiable heroine, an unstable creature tossed about from one compassion
to another, from a contemptible dissatisfaction here to a
half-hypocritical idea of reparation there, and now to self-abasement!
She was sick from disgust at her ingratitude to this poor invalid,
through whom she had become majestic, holding fate back so that beauty,
and even life, might miraculously survive. She seemed to have emerged
from an ignoble dream; she longed to merit again, at least in her
devotion to this supine figure, that word, perfection. Suddenly her
bosom swelled not only with compunction, but with love also--since it
was she, indeed, who had recreated him, and since without the
nourishment of her daily reassurances he must die.

"Help me to deserve those words," she besought him, bending down
through the shadows. Her tears moistened his lips, and upon that
revelation he stammered:

"At this moment I feel that you're mine."

"Not only this moment. Always."

CHAPTER XLIV

In the morning, when Brantome had departed for the city, Lilla said to
Hamoud:

"Please tell the servants that if any one should ask for me I'm not at
home."

Soon afterward, while David was at work shut up in the study, and Lilla
was trying to read a book in the living room, the doorbell rang. When
she heard Hamoud, in the hall, speaking quickly in Arabic, her body
relaxed. She thought:

"He has found one of his own people. I am glad. He must have been so
lonely all this while!"

She heard another voice, deeper and more vibrant. "Yes, Arabic," she
said, smiling contentedly. Of a sudden, for some inexplicable reason,
she felt as if she were going to faint.

She raised her eyes from the book, and saw a tall man with a black
beard, standing in the hall doorway, watching her.

She was seized with the paralyzing chill that comes to those who seem
to be confronted by apparitions of the dead. Her conviction that she
saw no living man was strengthened by his physical alteration. His
black beard, which covered even his cheekbones, masked a shriveled
countenance. His eyes had receded into their sockets; his lips were
stretched over his teeth; and the swarthiness of his skin had become
sulphurous. The stillness of his attitude, and his blank, attentive
look, completed the effect of unreality.

Then she thought, "Perhaps it's I who am dead." Her surroundings
melted away. All her obligations related to these surroundin