Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/500

 and shaking them as from a heart too full for utterance.

"Pity me, my friend; pity me!" he presently cried. "Look at this lovely world and think what it must be to be dead to it!"

"Dead?" poor Rowland temporised.

"Dead, dead; dead and buried! Buried in an open grave where you lie staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the waving flowers and hearing all nature live and grow above you. That 's the way I feel."

"I 'm very glad to hear it. Death of that sort 's very near to resurrection."

"It's too horrible," Roderick went on; "it has all come over me here. If I were not ashamed I could shed a bushel of tears. For one hour of what I have been I 'd give up—everything I 'm not."

"Never mind what you 'have' been; be something better!"

"I shall never be anything again; it's no use talking! But I don't know what secret spring has been touched since I 've lain here. Something in my heart seems suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and desire. I know what I 've lost and I think it horrible. Mind you, I know it, I feel it. Remember that hereafter. Don't say that he was stupefied and senseless, that his perception was dulled or his aspiration dead. Say he trembled in every nerve with a sense of the beauty and sweetness of life; say he rebelled and protested and struggled; say he was buried alive, with his eyes open and his heart beating to madness; say he clung to 466