hand that looked as if it were gnawed away, with an effort muttered a few indistinct words—whether of welcome or reproach, who can tell? His emaciated chest heaved, and over the dwindled pupils of his kindling eyes rolled two hard-wrung tears of suffering.
My heart sank. . . . I sat down on a chair beside him, and involuntarily dropping my eyes before the horror and hideousness of it, I too held out my hand.
But it seemed to me that it was not his hand that took hold of me.
It seemed to me that between us is sitting a tall, still, white woman. A long robe shrouds her from head to foot. Her deep, pale eyes look into vacancy; no sound is uttered by her pale, stern lips.
This woman has joined our hands. . . . She has reconciled us for ever.
Yes. . . . Death has reconciled us. . . .
April 1878.
A VISIT
I was sitting at the open window . . . in the morning, the early morning of the first of May.
The dawn had not yet begun; but already
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