As he watched her he
saw what, he thought, was an illusion--the blueness of the room, of the
walls, seemed to settle on her countenance. It increased, her face was
in tone with the color that had so disturbed her, a vitreous blue too
intense for realization. He was startled: like a sponge, sopping up the
atmosphere, she darkened. It was so brutal, so hideous, that he spoke
involuntarily:
"No one can live blue like that."
Then, with a glance instinct with dread, he saw that he was right--
Savina had died.
A calm of desperation swept over him. He must tell Daniel and the
doctor. But they would still need the ice. The revolting details! And
what had Fancett meant? It must all come out now--his presence in Cuba
with Savina--in a storm of publicity and condemnation. He regretted
this, because of Savina, dead. Alive she would have smiled her
contempt; but death was different. Anyone would acknowledge that. The
dead should be protected from slurs and scandal and obscene comments. A
confusion of small facts poured through him, and broke into trivial
fragments any single dignity of emotion; no generous sorrow saved him
from the petty actuality of his situation; even his sense of loss, he
realized dismayed, was dull.
Savina was rapidly growing, at last, cold; her arm was stiffening in
the position in which he had left it; in a necessary forcible
gentleness he composed her body.
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