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.