The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying Saviour.--Give
me your hand, he said; and Iris placed her right hand in his left. So
they remained, until presently his eyes lost their meaning, though they
still remained vacantly fixed upon the white image. Yet he held the
young girl's hand firmly, as if it were leading him through some
deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to. But presently an
involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and his terrible dying
grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture.
She pressed her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held
her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers
would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the
Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir from her place.
Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying
figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet and side and
lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer uncomplaining.
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