r) "hear me say anything?"

"Mr. Trefusis does not mean to say that you did, I am sure. Oh, no. Mr.
Trefusis's feelings are naturally--are harrowed. That is all."

"My feelings!" cried Trefusis impatiently. "Do you suppose my feelings
are a trumpery set of social observances, to be harrowed to order and
exhibited at funerals? She has gone as we three shall go soon enough. If
we were immortal, we might reasonably pity the dead. As we are not, we
had better save our energies to minimize the harm we are likely to do
before we follow her."

The doctor was deeply offended by this speech, for the statement that
he should one day die seemed to him a reflection upon his professional
mastery over death. Mrs. Jansenius was glad to see Trefusis confirming
her bad opinion and report of him by his conduct and language in the
doctor's presence. There was a brief pause, and then Trefusis, too far
out of sympathy with them to be able to lead the conversation into a
kinder vein, left the room. In the act of putting on his overcoat in the
hall, he hesitated, and hung it up again irresolutely. Suddenly he ran
upstairs. At the sound of his steps a woman came from one of the rooms
and looked inquiringly at him.

"Is it here?" he said.

"Yes, sir," she whispered.

A painful sense of constriction came in his chest, and he turned pale
and stopped with his hand on the lock.

"Don't be afraid, sir," said the woman, with an encouraging smile. "She
looks beautiful."

He looked at her with a strange grin, as if she had uttered a ghastly
but irresistible joke. Then he went in, and, when he reached the bed,
wished he had stayed without. He was not one of those who, seeing little
in the faces of the living miss little in the faces of the dead. The
arrangement of the black hair on the pillow, the soft drapery, and the
flowers placed there by the nurse to complete the artistic effect to
which she had so confidently referred, were lost on him; he saw only
a lifeless mask that had been his wife's face, and at sight of it his
knees failed, and he had to lean for support on the rail at the foot of
the bed.

When he looked again the face seemed to have changed. It was no longer
a waxlike mask, but Henrietta, girlish and pathetically at rest. Death
seemed to have cancelled her marriage and womanhood; he had never seen
her look so young. A minute passed, and then a tear dropped on the
coverlet. He started; shook another tear on his hand, and stared