Yellow, wrinkled, completely bald, with a scanty grey beard, he sat clothed
in nothing but a shirt purposely slit open.... He could not bear the weight
of even the lightest clothes. Jerkily he stretched out to me his fearfully
thin hand that looked as if it were gnawed away, with an effort muttered
a few indistinct words--whether of welcome or reproach, who can tell? His
emaciated chest heaved, and over the dwindled pupils of his kindling eyes
rolled two hard-wrung tears of suffering.
My heart sank.... I sat down on a chair beside him, and involuntarily
dropping my eyes before the horror and hideousness of it, I too held out my
hand.
But it seemed to me that it was not his hand that took hold of me.
It seemed to me that between us is sitting a tall, still, white woman. A
long robe shrouds her from head to foot. Her deep, pale eyes look into
vacancy; no sound is uttered by her pale, stern lips.
This woman has joined our hands.... She has reconciled us for ever.
Yes.... Death has reconciled us....
_April 1878._