He had his ear against her heart when I first saw him, while his fingers pressed her pulse; but in a moment he stood up, muttering a single word.
“Dead!”
With all my might I tried to call out to him, but in vain.
Again he returned to the charge, and this time the examination was most searching.
Once more he rose up, muttering:
“Dead as a door nail!”
Then instead of turning to me, as one might naturally have supposed he would do, he stood gazing down upon Walla’s face.
What did he see? What did he read in those white, silent features?
God knows! I only know what I saw, and, be it real, or be it but a dream, my eyes actually beheld what I am about to relate.
Above Walla hovered two females in snow white garments, with faces pure and refined beyond description. They seemed to be busy about her head; their hands moved with incredible rapidity.
For several moments, it seemed to me, I continued to watch them, then suddenly they rose into the air and with them rose Walla, perfect even to the smallest shred of her garments; yet another Walla remained stretched upon the rocks.
“She is dead! These are ministering angels taking her spirit away,” I thought; when all at once something white seemed to flit across my vision, and to my utter amazement I beheld the woman whom I had seen standing by the side of Maurice on Mars, settling down over Walla’s earthly form.
“It is Merzilla! She is seeking a body!” flashed over me, and I remembered Maurice’s words.
For an instant she appeared to hover over Walla, her fingers moving like lightning. To me it seemed as though she were drawing from her own brain a silvery thread which she conveyed to the brain of the corpse.
Still I watched her. Still the work continued. The length of the thread was tremendous. It seemed as if miles upon miles of it had been unwound.
Would she never cease?
Just as I asked myself the question, I heard the Doctor’s voice shouting in my ear.
