ink, or even
to dream again! Once, to remove a tooth and straighten the rest, they
made me senseless; and that sinking into senselessness, though I knew
I should waken in a minute, was horrible; and--to sink into
senselessness from which I shall never waken!"

She was sinking fast indeed, and this terror of death, so seldom seen
in the dying, grew apparently deeper and more intense as death drew
near. I could not bear it, and at last took my resolve and dismissed
Velna, forbidding her to return till summoned.

"Ah!" said Eunane, "you send her away that she may not see the last.
Is it so near?"

"No, darling!" I replied (she, like Eveena, had learnt the meaning of
one or two expressions of human affection in my own tongue), "but I
have that to say which I would not willingly say in her presence. You
dread death not as a short terrible pain, and for you it will not be
so, not as a short sleep, but as eternal senselessness and
nothingness. Has it never seemed to you strange that, loving Eveena as
I do, _I_ do not fear to die? Though you did not know it, I have lived
almost since first you knew me under the threat of death; and death
sudden, secret, without warning, menacing me every day and every hour.
And yet, though death meant leaving her and leaving her to a fate I
could not foresee, I have been able to look on it steadily. Kneeling
here, I know that I am very probably giving my life to the same end as
yours. I do not fear. That may not seem strange to you; but Eveena
knows all I know, and I could scarcely keep Eveena away. So loving
each other, _we_ do not fear to die, because we believe, we know, that
that in us which thinks, and feels, and loves will live; that in death
we lay aside the body as we lay aside our worn-out clothing. If I
thought otherwise, Eunane, I could not bear _this_ parting."

She clasped my hands, almost as much surprised and touched, I thought,
for the moment by the expression of an affection of which till that
hour neither of us were fully aware, as by the marvellous and
incredible assurance she had heard.

"Ah!" she said, "I have heard her people are strange, and they dream
such things. No, Clasfempta, it is a fancy, or you say it to comfort
me, not because it is true."

The expression of terror that again came over her face was too painful
for endurance. To calm that terror I would have broken every oath,
have risked every penalty. But in truth I could never have paused to
ask what in