"
"It was not I."
"Didn't you hear it?"
"No."
Julian turned to the doctor.
"It was an unearthly sound," he said. "Like nothing I have ever heard or
imagined. And, doctor, just afterward I saw something, something that
made me believe Valentine was really dead."
"What was it?"
Julian hesitated. Then he avoided directly replying to the question.
"Doctor," he said, "of course I needn't ask you if you have often been at
deathbeds?"
"I have. Very often," Levillier replied.
"I have never seen any one die," Julian continued, still with excitement.
"But people have told me, people who have watched by the dying, that at
the moment of death sometimes a tiny flame, a sort of shadow almost,
comes from the lips of the corpse and evaporates into the air. And they
say that flame is the soul going out of the body."
"I have never seen that," Levillier said. "And I have watched many
deaths."
"I saw such a flame to-night," Julian said. "After I heard the cry, I
distinctly saw a flame come from where Valentine was sitting and float up
and disappear in the darkness. And--and afterwards, when Valentine lay so
still and cold, I grew to believe that flame was his soul and that I had
actually seen him die in the dark.
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