In one instant."

On the bed lay Sir Isaac. His hand was thrust out as though he grasped
at some invisible thing. His open eyes stared hard at his wife, and as
she met his eyes he snored noisily in his nose and throat.

She looked from the doctor to the nurse. It seemed to her that both
these people must be mad. Never had she seen anything less like death.
"But he's not dead!" she protested, still standing in the middle of the
room.

"It iss chust the air in his throat," the doctor said. "He went--_so!_
In one instant as I was helping him."

He waited to see some symptom of feminine weakness. There was a quality
in his bearing--as though this event did him credit.

"But--Isaac!"

It was astounding. The noise in his throat ceased. But he still stared
at her. And then the nurse made a kind of assault upon Lady Harman,
caught her--even if she didn't fall. It was no doubt the proper formula
to collapse. Or to fling oneself upon the deceased. Lady Harman resisted
this assistance, disentangled herself and remained amazed; the nurse a
little disconcerted but still ready behind her.

"But," said Lady Harman slowly, not advancing and pointing incredulously
at the unwinking stare that met her own, "is he dead? Is he really dead?
Like that?"

The doctor's gesture to the nurse betrayed his sense of the fine quick
scene this want of confidence had ruined. Under no circumstances in life
did English people really seem to know how to behave or what was
expected of them. He answered with something bordering upon irony.
"Madam," he said, with a slight bow, "he is _really_ det."

"But--like _that_!" cried Lady Harman.

"Like that," repeated the doctor.

She went three steps nearer and stopped, open-eyed, wonder-struck, her
lips compressed.

Sec.12

For a time astonishment overwhelmed her mind. She did not think of Sir
Isaac, she did not think of herself, her whole being was filled by this
marvel of death and cessation. Like _that_!

Death!

Never before had she seen it. She had expected an extreme dignity, an
almost ceremonial sinking back, a slow ebbing, but this was like a shot
from a bow. It stunned her. And for some time she remained stunned,
while the doctor and her secretary and the hotel people did all that
they deemed seemly on this great occasion. She let them send her into
another room; she watched with detached indifference a post-mortem
consultation in whispers with a doctor from Rapallo. Then came a grea