t were, with a luminous veil. It was
not that she was by this made or shown as cold or distant, or in any way
harsh or forbidding. On the contrary, protected by this dignity, she
seemed much more sweet and genial than before. It was as though she felt
that she could afford to stoop now that her loftiness was realized--that
her position was recognized and secure. If her inherent dignity made an
impenetrable nimbus round her, this was against others; she herself was
not bound by it, or to be bound. So marked was this, so entirely and
sweetly womanly did she appear, that I caught myself wondering in flashes
of thought, which came as sharp periods of doubting judgment between
spells of unconscious fascination, how I had ever come to think she was
aught but perfect woman. As she rested, half sitting and half lying on
the pile of cushions, she was all grace, and beauty, and charm, and
sweetness--the veritable perfect woman of the dreams of a man, be he
young or old. To have such a woman sit by his hearth and hold her holy
of holies in his heart might well be a rapture to any man. Even an hour
of such entrancing joy might be well won by a lifetime of pain, by the
balance of a long life sacrificed, by the extinction of life itself.
Quick behind the record of such thoughts came the answer to the doubt
they challenged: if it should turn out that she was not living at all,
but one of the doomed and pitiful Un-Dead, then so much more on account
of her very sweetness and beauty would be the winning of her back to Life
and Heaven--even were it that she might find happiness in the heart and
in the arms of another man.

Once, when I leaned over the hearth to put fresh logs on the fire, my
face was so close to hers that I felt her breath on my cheek. It
thrilled me to feel even the suggestion of that ineffable contact. Her
breath was sweet--sweet as the breath of a calf, sweet as the whiff of a
summer breeze across beds of mignonette. How could anyone believe for a
moment that such sweet breath could come from the lips of the dead--the
dead _in esse_ or _in posse_--that corruption could send forth fragrance
so sweet and pure? It was with satisfied happiness that, as I looked at
her from my stool, I saw the dancing of the flames from the beech-logs
reflected in her glorious black eyes, and the stars that were hidden in
them shine out with new colours and new lustre as they gleamed, rising
and falling like hopes and fears. As