no movement had taken place within,
I pressed against it once more, this time with all my strength, when it
flew from its hinges, and I fell forward into a room so stifling, chill,
and dark that I paused for a moment to collect my scattered senses
before venturing to look around me. It was well I did so. In another
moment, the pallor and fixity of the pretty Irish face staring upon me
from amidst the tumbled clothes of a bed, drawn up against the wall at
my side, struck me with so deathlike a chill that, had it not been for
that one instant of preparation, I should have been seriously dismayed.
As it was, I could not prevent a feeling of sickly apprehension from
seizing me as I turned towards the silent figure stretched so near, and
observed with what marble-like repose it lay beneath the patchwork quilt
drawn across it, asking myself if sleep could be indeed so like death
in its appearance. For that it was a sleeping woman I beheld, I did not
seriously doubt. There were too many evidences of careless life in the
room for any other inference. The clothes, left just as she had stepped
from them in a circle on the floor; the liberal plate of food placed
in waiting for her on the chair by the door, --food amongst which I
recognized, even in this casual glance, the same dish which we had had
for breakfast --all and everything in the room spoke of robust life and
reckless belief in the morrow.

And yet so white was the brow turned up to the bare beams of the
unfinished wall above her, so glassy the look of the half-opened eyes,
so motionless the arm lying half under, half over, the edge of the
coverlid that it was impossible not to shrink from contact with a
creature so sunk in unconsciousness. But contact seemed to be necessary;
any cry which I could raise at that moment would be ineffectual enough
to pierce those dull ears. Nerving myself, therefore, I stooped and
lifted the hand which lay with its telltale scar mockingly uppermost,
intending to speak, call, do something, anything, to arouse her. But at
the first touch of her hand on mine an unspeakable horror thrilled me.
It was not only icy cold, but stiff. Dropping it in my agitation, I
started back and again surveyed the face. Great God! when did life ever
look like that? What sleep ever wore such pallid hues, such accusing
fixedness? Bending once more I listened at the lips. Not a breath, nor a
stir. Shocked to the core of my being, I made one final effort. Tearing
d