The
sheets were turned smoothly down under the blue chin of the dead man,
who lay there upon his back, his face with fast-shut eyes dusky white,
or rather grey, among the pillows. As Julian looked upon him he
exclaimed:
"Good God, it isn't Marr! Valentine, it isn't Marr!"
"Not?"
"No. And yet--wait a moment--"
Julian came nearer to the bed and bent right down over the corpse. Then
he drew away and looked at Valentine, who was at the other side of the
bed.
"Oh, Valentine, this is strange," he whispered, and drawing a chair
to the bedside, he sank down upon it. "This is strange. What is it
death does to a man? Yes; this is Marr. I see now; but so different,
so altered! The whole expression,--oh, it is almost incredible."
He stared again upon the face.
It was long in shape, thin and swarthy, very weary looking, the face of
a man who had seen much, who had done very many, very various things.
No face with shut eyes can look, perhaps, completely characteristic.
Yet this face was full of a character that seemed curiously at war with
the shape of the features and with the position of the closed eyes,
which were very near together. Julian, in describing Marr to Valentine,
had pronounced him Satanic, and this dead face was, in truth, somewhat
Mephistophelean.
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