--Give me your hand,--he said; and Iris placed her right hand
in his left. So they remained, until presently his eyes lost their
meaning, though they still remained vacantly fixed upon the white
image. Yet he held the young girl's hand firmly, as if it were leading
him through some deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to.
But presently an involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and
his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an
engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The
inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her
own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the
tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir
from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes
upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet
and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer
uncomplaining. In the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget
the duties of her tender office, but dried the dying man's moist
forehead with her handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were
glistening on her own.
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