An artist might well have painted it upon his canvas as
a devil. But he must have reproduced merely the features and colouring,
the blue, shaven cheeks, and hollow eye-sockets; for the expression of
his devil he would have been obliged to seek another model. Marr, dead,
looked serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken himself
free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to realize the sudden
and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and who smiles, thinking,
"That ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no longer. I am free." The
dead face was wonderfully happy.
Julian seemed entirely fascinated by it. After his last smothered
exclamation to Valentine, he sat, leaning one arm upon the head of the
bed, gazing till he looked stern, as all utterly ardent observers look.
Valentine, too, was staring at the dead man.
There was a very long silence in the room. The rain leaped upon the tall
windows on each side of the mirror and ran down them with an unceasing
chilly vivacity. Lights from the street flickered through the blinds to
join the glare of the gas. All the music of the town wandered round the
house as a panther wanders round a bungalow by night. And the thin stream
of people flowed by on the shining pavement beyond the iron railing of
the narrow garden.
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