She could not have died.’  Monotonously, automatically, the phrase repeated itself over and over again in his mind, while his eyes remained fixed on the ivory case into which her looking-glass was folded.  It was an effect of his fatigue, no doubt, that his eyes, once directed upon an object, were slow to leave it for another; that a phrase once pronounced in his thought had this tendency to repeat itself over and over again.

But at last he roused himself a little, and leaning forward, put his hand out and up, to take the glass from the shelf.  He wished to hold it, to touch it and look into it.  As he lifted it towards him, it fell open, the mirror proper being fastened to a leather back, which was glued to the ivory, and formed a hinge.  It fell open; and his grasp had been insecure; and the jerk as it opened was enough.  It slipped from his fingers, and dropped with a crash upon the hearthstone.

The sound went through him like a physical pain.  He sank back in his chair, and closed his eyes.  His heart was beating as after a mighty physical exertion.  He knew vaguely that a calamity had befallen him; he could vaguely imagine the splinters of shattered glass at his feet.  But his physical prostration was so great as to obliterate, to neutralise, emotion.  He felt very cold.  He felt that he was being hurried along with terrible speed through darkness and cold air.  There was the continuous roar of rapid motion in his ears, a faint, dizzy bewilderment in his head.  He felt that he was trying to catch hold of things, to stop his progress, but his hands closed upon emptiness; that he was trying to call out for help, but he could make no sound.  On—­on—­on, he was being whirled through some immeasurable abyss of space.

* * * * *

‘Ah, yes, he’s dead, quite dead,’ the doctor said.  ’He has been dead some hours.  He must have passed away peacefully, sitting here in his chair.’

‘Poor gentleman,’ said the porter’s wife.  ’And a broken looking-glass beside him.  Oh, it’s a sure sign, a broken looking-glass.’

THE REWARD OF VIRTUE

He was one of the institutions of the Latin Quarter, one of the least admirable.  He haunted the Boulevard St. Michel, hung round the cafes, begged of the passing stranger, picked up cigarette-ends, and would, at a pinch, run errands, or do odd jobs.

With his sallow, wrinkled skin, his jungle of grey beard, his thick grey hair, matted and shiny, covering his ears and falling about his shoulders, he was scarcely an attractive-looking person.  Besides, he had lost an eye; and its empty socket irresistibly drew your gaze—­an abhorrent vacuum.  His clothes would be the odds and ends of students’ offcasts, in the last stages of disintegration.  He had a chronic stoop; always aimed his surviving eye obliquely at you, from a bent head; and walked with a sort of hang-dog shuffle that seemed a general self-denunciation.