present
to Miss Tita that if I made the invalid angry she ought perhaps to be
spared the sight of me. "The sight of you? Do you think she can SEE?" my
companion demanded almost with indignation. I did think so but forebore
to say it, and I softly followed my conductress.

I remember that what I said to her as I stood for a moment beside the
old woman's bed was, "Does she never show you her eyes then? Have you
never seen them?" Miss Bordereau had been divested of her green shade,
but (it was not my fortune to behold Juliana in her nightcap) the upper
half of her face was covered by the fall of a piece of dingy lacelike
muslin, a sort of extemporized hood which, wound round her head,
descended to the end of her nose, leaving nothing visible but her white
withered cheeks and puckered mouth, closed tightly and, as it were
consciously. Miss Tita gave me a glance of surprise, evidently not
seeing a reason for my impatience. "You mean that she always wears
something? She does it to preserve them."

"Because they are so fine?"

"Oh, today, today!" And Miss Tita shook her head, speaking very low.
"But they used to be magnificent!"

"Yes indeed, we have Aspern's word for that." And as I looked again at
the old woman's wrappings I could imagine that she had not wished to
allow people a reason to say that the great poet had overdone it. But
I did not waste my time in considering Miss Bordereau, in whom the
appearance of respiration was so slight as to suggest that no human
attention could ever help her more. I turned my eyes all over the room,
rummaging with them the closets, the chests of drawers, the tables. Miss
Tita met them quickly and read, I think, what was in them; but she
did not answer it, turning away restlessly, anxiously, so that I felt
rebuked, with reason, for a preoccupation that was almost profane in
the presence of our dying companion. All the same I took another look,
endeavoring to pick out mentally the place to try first, for a person
who should wish to put his hand on Miss Bordereau's papers directly
after her death. The room was a dire confusion; it looked like the room
of an old actress. There were clothes hanging over chairs, odd-looking
shabby bundles here and there, and various pasteboard boxes piled
together, battered, bulging, and discolored, which might have been fifty
years old. Miss Tita after a moment noticed the direction of my
eyes again and, as if she guessed how I judged the air of the place