as not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being
well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done
with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad,
half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon
be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be
different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and
putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar
humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the
fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she
would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer
Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She
was going to die.

It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died.
She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once when
Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave,
significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as if
she would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the
pillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his
face in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said.
"Will you ever forget me?"

"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you."

He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held
him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For a
moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that
was the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life.

Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to be
humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with
dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside,
and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was
picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go
downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that
time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her
that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not
mind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a silly
little girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see.'"

Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, and
she said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry,
and struggled so