The features, waxy-white, were mercifully
spared by the flames which had licked at the shielding hands and
arms that had borne her hither. Yet they seemed even more thin,
more wax-like, more unreal, than had their pallor come by merciful
death. Death? Ah, here was written death through years. Life,
full, red-blooded, abounding, luxuriant, riotous, never had
animated this pallid form, or else had long years since abandoned
it. This was but the husk of a human being, clinging beyond its
appointed time to this world, so cruel and so kind.
They stood and gazed, solemnly, for a time. The hands of Josephine
St. Auban were raised in the sign of her religion. Her lips moved
in some swift prayer. She could hear the short, hard breathing of
the man who stood near her, grimed, blistered, disfigured, in his
effort to bring away into the light for a time at least this
specter, so long set apart from all the usual ways of life.
"She has been there for years," he said, at last, thickly.
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