Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/309

 He saw, with the last vividness, and it was as if, in their silences, they were simply so leaving what he saw. "She doesn't speak at all? I don't mean not of me."

"Of nothing—of no one." And she went on, Susan Shepherd, giving it out as she had had to take it. "She doesn't want to die. Think of her age. Think of her goodness. Think of her beauty. Think of all she is. Think of all she has. She lies there stiffening herself and clinging to it. So I thank God!" the poor lady wound up with a kind of wan inconsequence.

He wondered. "You thank God?"

"That she's so quiet."

He continued to wonder. "Is she so quiet?"

"She's more than quiet. She's grim. It's what she has never been. So you see—all these days. I can't tell you—but it's better so. It would kill me if she were to tell me."

"To tell you?" He was still at a loss.

"How she feels. How she clings. How she doesn't want it."

"How she doesn't want to die? Of course she doesn't want it." He had a long pause, and they might have been thinking together of what they could even now do to prevent it. This, however, was not what he brought out. Milly's "grimness," and the great hushed palace, were present to him; present with the little woman before him as she must have been waiting there and listening. "Only, what harm have you done her?" 299