Then he whispered--"I wish I could die like this--now!" She looked at him with her big sombre eyes, in which there was no responsive light.

His thought was so remote from her understanding that she let the words pass by unnoticed, like the breath of the wind, like the flight of a cloud.

Woman though she was, she could not comprehend, in her simplicity, the tremendous compliment of that speech, that whisper of deadly happiness, so sincere, so spontaneous, coming so straight from the heart--like every corruption.

It was the voice of madness, of a delirious peace, of happiness that is infamous, cowardly, and so exquisite that the debased mind refuses to contemplate its termination: for to the victims of such happiness the moment of its ceasing is the beginning afresh of that torture which is its price.
With her brows slightly knitted in the determined preoccupation of her own desires, she said-- "Now tell me all.

All the words spoken between you and Syed Abdulla." Tell what?
What words?
Her voice recalled back the consciousness that had departed under her touch, and he became aware of the passing minutes every one of which was like a reproach; of those minutes that falling, slow, reluctant, irresistible into the past, marked his footsteps on the way to perdition.