n with Benedetta the same despairing clasp seeking to
vanquish death, the same savagery in hurling oneself into the abyss with
the corpse of the one's only love? Benedetta and Cassia were as sisters,
Cassia, who lived anew in the old painting in the _salon_ overhead,
Benedetta who was here dying of her lover's death, as though she were but
the other's spirit. Both had the same delicate childish features, the
same mouth of passion, the same large dreamy eyes set in the same round,
practical, and stubborn head.

"My Dario, here I am!"

For a second, which seemed an eternity, they clasped one another, she
neither repelled nor terrified by the disorder which made him so
unrecognisable, but displaying a delirious passion, a holy frenzy as if
to pass beyond life, to penetrate with him into the black Unknown. And
beneath the shock of the felicity at last offered to him he expired, with
his arms yet convulsively wound around her as though indeed to carry her
off. Then, whether from grief or from bliss amidst that embrace of death,
there came such a rush of blood to her heart that the organ burst: she
died on her lover's neck, both tightly and for ever clasped in one
another's arms.

There was a faint sigh. Victorine understood and drew near, while Pierre,
also erect, remained quivering with the tearful admiration of one who has
beheld the sublime.

"Look, look!" whispered the servant, "she no longer moves, she no longer
breathes. Ah! my poor child, my poor child, she is dead!"

Then the priest murmured: "Oh! God, how beautiful they are."

It was true, never had loftier and more resplendent beauty appeared on
the faces of the dead. Dario's countenance, so lately aged and earthen,
had assumed the pallor and nobility of marble, its features lengthened
and simplified as by a transport of ineffable joy. Benedetta remained
very grave, her lips curved by ardent determination, whilst her whole
face was expressive of dolorous yet infinite beatitude in a setting of
infinite whiteness. Their hair mingled, and their eyes, which had
remained open, continued gazing as into one another's souls with eternal,
caressing sweetness. They were for ever linked, soaring into immortality
amidst the enchantment of their union, vanquishers of death, radiant with
the rapturous beauty of love, the conqueror, the immortal.

But Victorine's sobs at last burst forth, mingled with such lamentations
that great confusion followed. Pierre, now quite besid