She
only kept him waiting, however; that is he only waited. It had
become suddenly, from her movement and attitude, beautiful and
vivid to him that she had something more to give him; her wasted
face delicately shone with it--it glittered almost as with the
white lustre of silver in her expression. She was right,
incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, and
strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful
was still in the air, she appeared to present it as inordinately
soft. This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape the more
gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for some
minutes silent, her face shining at him, her contact imponderably
pressing, and his stare all kind but all expectant. The end, none
the less, was that what he had expected failed to come to him.
Something else took place instead, which seemed to consist at first
in the mere closing of her eyes. She gave way at the same instant
to a slow fine shudder, and though he remained staring--though he
stared in fact but the harder--turned off and regained her chair.
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