Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that she was going to die.  She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his unbearable grief to some other room.

And Jenny’s once rosy apple of a face made one’s heart ache to look on now.  It made one frightened, too:  it was so dark and witchlike, so uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows.  She would sit up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing laugh to herself,—­a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary place.  A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the “unwilling sleep” of a strong narcotic.  She would begin a sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead bird lying in the rain.  Her hearing was strangely keen.  And yet she did not know, was not to know.  How was one to talk to her—­talk of being well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done with all these things?  How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists?  How say that they would soon be strong and round again?  Ugh! she was already beginning to be different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar humanity into a being of another element,—­an element we dread as the fish dreads the air.  Soon we should not be able to talk to her.  Soon she would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth.  She was no longer Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept.  She was going to die.

It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died.  She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon.  Once when Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, significant gesture to her side.  She was lying down, and she made as if she would sit up.  Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the pillows at her back.  Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his face in her hands and kissed him.  “Do you love me, Theophil?” she said.  “Will you ever forget me?”

“I will love you for ever.  I will never forget you.”

He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh.  For a moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that was the last flicker of Jenny’s conscious life.