The shade grew colder on his face. There was an intense
silence in the room, then the words came across it, "Quite extinct."
My ears seemed to fill with sounds, the ground to rise upward, the
bed to heave, and I went forward blindly and tore his hand from her
breast and pushed him from the bed.
"Then go and leave us," I said, and I heard my own voice as from a
great distance.
He looked at me, and his face and everything around was dark before
my eyes.
"Will you kindly go out of this room?" I repeated, and he walked to
the door.
I opened it, he passed out, and I shut and locked it, and came back
to the bed. The weight of nerveless, passive beauty on it had
crushed a depression in its whiteness, the head had sunk down
sideways to the pillow as in tired sleep. Across the throat and
breast, over and amongst the disturbed laces of her dress, and on
the parted gleaming satin of her stays fell a flood of rose-coloured
light. One shoulder rose from it and caught a shadow; another shade
lay lower in the dimples of the elbow; the inside of the arm looked
warm. The throat, the round soft throat, seemed glowing; the fallen
head, the passive arms, the whole outstretched form seemed relaxed
in the abandonment of sleep. Had I often seen her in my dreams like
this? This was but the realisation of my dreams. I bent over her,
then threw myself wildly upon the bed beside her, and drew her into
my arms.
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