Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/483

THE AMERICAN Bread sententiously. "In a little while I went away to the front of the house and looked out into the court, and there, before long, I saw Mr. Urbain ride in alone. I waited a bit to hear him come upstairs with his mother, but they stopped below and I returned to the other room. I went to the bed and held up the light to him, but I don't know why I did n't let the candle stick fall. The Marquis's eyes were open—open wide! they were staring at me. I knelt down beside him and took his hands and begged him to tell me, in the holy name of wonder, if he was truly alive or what or where he was. Still he looked at me a long time, and then made me a sign to put my ear close to him. 'I'm dead, my dear,' he said, 'I'm dreadfully dead. The Marquise has killed me. Yes.' I was all in a tremble. I did n't understand him. I did n't know what had become of him: it was so as if the dead had been speaking. 'But you'll get well now, sir,' I said. And then he whimpered again, ever so weak: 'I would n't get well for a kingdom. I would n't be that woman's husband again.' And then he said more; he said she had murdered him. I asked him what she had done to him and I remember his very words: 'She has cruelly taken my life, as true as I lie here finished. And she'll do the same to my daughter,' he said; 'my poor unhappy child.' And he begged me to prevent that, and then he said he was dying, he was 'knowingly' dead. I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost as dead as himself. All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for him; and then I had to tell him I could n't manage that sort of thing. He asked me to hold him up in 453