"No!" she cried. "You shall not be hidden away like that. You shall not
go alive into the tomb and leave me at the door. Because I cannot bear
it."
She leaned toward him, and her hand fell lightly on his knee. It was a
claiming touch, and there was something in the unfolded sweetness of her
face that was not ambiguous. Arnold received the intelligence. It came
in a vague, grey, monitory form, a cloud, a portent, a chill menace; but
it came, and he paled under it. He seemed to lean upon his own hands,
pressed one on each side of him to the seat of the sofa for support, and
he looked in fixed silence at the shapely white thing on his knee. His
face seemed to wither, new lines came upon it as the impression grew in
him, and the glamour faded out of hers as she was sharply reminded,
looking at him, that he had not traversed the waste with her, that she
had kept her vigils alone. Yet it was all said and done, and there was
no repentance in her. She only gathered herself together, and fell back,
as it were, upon her magnificent position. As she drew her hand away, he
dropped his face into the cover of his own, leaning his elbow on his
knee, and there was a pulsing silence.
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