n other ways; but I could do nothing. Once she turned
sharply, as if startled, and looked straight at me. I strove more
frantically than ever to make signs to her; but no, I could not.
Seemingly she did not see.

Then I thought: "I'm dead! This is being dead! I've died!"

Margaret ran to the dressing-table and picked up her hand-mirror. She
rubbed it carefully on the counterpane, and then held it to the mouth
and nostrils of that face on the pillows, and then examined it under the
gas. She was very agitated; the whole of her demeanour had changed; I
scarcely recognized her. I could not help thinking that she was mad. She
put down the mirror, glanced at the clock, even glanced out of the
window (she was much closer to me than I am now to you), and then flew
back to the bed. She seized the scissors that were hanging from her
girdle, and cut a hole in the top pillow, and drew from it a flock of
down, which she carefully placed on the lips of that face. The down did
not even tremble. Then she bared the breast of the body on the bed, and
laid her ear upon the region of the heart; I could see her eyes blinking
as she listened intensely. After she had listened some time she raised
her head, with a little sob, and frantically pulled the bell-rope. I
could hear the bell; we could both hear it. There was no response;
nothing but a fearful silence. Margaret, catching her breath, rushed out
of the room. I was sick with the most awful disgust that I could not
force her to see where I was. I had been helpless before, when I lay in
the bed, but I was far more completely helpless now. Talk about the babe
unborn!

She came back with the servant, and the two women stood on either side
of the bed, gazing at that body. The servant whispered:

"They do say that if you put a full glass of water on the chest you can
tell for sure."

Margaret hesitated. However, the servant began to fill a glass of water
on the washstand, and they poised it on the chest of that body. Not the
slightest vibration troubled its surface. I was--not angry; no,
tremendously disgusted is the only term I can use--at all this flummery
with that body on the bed. It was shocking to me that they should
confuse that body with me. I thought them silly, wilfully silly. I
thought their behaviour monstrously blind. There was I, the master of
the house, standing chilled between the windows, and neither Margaret
nor the servant would take the least notice of me!

The serva