In the centre stood the sarcophagus.

I felt its presence, though my eyes avoided it.

Above, on the wall, were the words borne along by carved angels:

"My love she sleeps: Oh, may her sleep
As it was lasting, so be deep."

And I seemed to hear her voice intone the words as I had heard them
from her lips so many times.

And then my eyes fell--on her! Aye! On her, stretched at full length
in her warm and glorious tomb. For above her mortal remains slept her
effigy wrought with all the skill of a great art.

I had feared to look upon it, but having looked, I felt that I could
never tear myself away from its peace and loveliness.

The long folds of the drapery fell straight from the small, round
throat to the tiny unshod feet, and so wonderfully was it wrought,
that it seemed as if the living beautiful flesh of the slender body
was still quick beneath it. The exquisite hands that I knew so
well--so delicate, and yet so strong--were gently crossed upon her
breast, and her arms held a long stemmed lily, emblem of purity, and
it looked to me there like a martyr's palm.

Perhaps it was the pale reflection from the red walls, but the figure
seemed too real to be mere stone!

I forgot the irony of the fact that I was merely seeing her through
his eyes--the eyes of the man who had robbed me. I felt only her
presence. I fell on my knees. I flung my arms across the beautiful
form--no colder to my embrace than had been the living woman! As I
recoiled from the death-like touch, my eyes fell on the words carved
on the face of the sarcophagus, and once more, it was like the voice
that was hushed in my ears.

"I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye
While the dim sheeted ghosts go by."

"Amen," I said, with all my heart, to the words he had carved above
her, for what, after the fever of such a life, could be so welcome to
her as dreamless, eternal silence, in which there would be no more
passion, no more struggling, no more love?

And, if I wished with all my soul, that the great surprise of death
might, for her, have been peace and silence, did I not bar myself as
well as him from the hope of Heaven?

How long I stood there, with hungry eyes devouring the marble effigy
of her I so loved--now tortured by its fidelity, now punished by its
coldness--I never knew.

Sometimes I noticed the changing of the light, the shifting of the
shadows, as the sun swung steadily upward, but it wa