I walked up and down the path, awaiting her: and
from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box of Swedish
matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the plain
end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger
joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible:
and I awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and
Rhadamanthus.
She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And
'Leda,' I said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going
straight to the point, 'we are to part, as you guess--for ever, as you
guess--for I see very well by your face that you guess. I, too, am very
sorry, my little child, and heavy is my heart. To leave you ... alone
... in the world ... is--death for me. But it must, ah it must, be
done.'
Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was
already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of
room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record
also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which
painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little
turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful--Confidence.
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