“I am not aware that I have said anything to call for such a remark.  Did you,” (appealing to the doctor) “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 at it incredulously.