I told Valentine
so to-night. He has been with me to see Marr's body."
"You have just come from that deathbed now?"
"Yes."
Julian sketched rapidly the events of the European Hotel, but he left
to the last the immense impression made upon him by the expression of
the dead man.
"He looked so happy, so good, that at first I could not recognize him,"
he said. "His face, dead, was the most absolutely direct contradiction
possible of his face, alive. He was not the same man."
"The man was gone, you see, Addison."
"Yes. But, then, what was it which remained to work this change in the
body?"
"Death gives a strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop of limbs
and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, work up an
impression."
"But there was something more here,--more than peace. There was a--well,
a strong happiness and a goodness. And Marr had always struck me as an
atrociously bad lot. I think I told you."
The doctor sat musing. Lawler came in with the tray, on which was a
small basin of gruel and soda-water bottles, a decanter of whisky,
and a tall tumbler. Julian mixed himself a drink, and the doctor,
still meditatively, took the basin of gruel onto his knees. As he
sipped it, he looked a strange, little, serious ascetic, sitting
there in the light from the wax candles, his shining boots planted
gently on the broad back of the slumbering mastiff, his light eyes
fixed on the fire.
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