But how quietly the slumberer lay ! how pale his features ! And how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame ! Yes , it was a corpse in its burial-clothes . Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion . Strange fantasy ! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside . Was there delusion in the moonbeams , or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as she bent over the pale corpse , pale as itself , and pressed her living lips to the cold ones of the dead ? As she drew back from that long kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its anguish . Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved responsive to her own . Still an illusion . The silken curtains had waved a second time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another fair young girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside . There the two maidens stood , both beautiful , with the pale beauty of the dead between them . But she who had first entered was proud and stately , and the other a soft and fragile thing . `` Away ! '' cried the lofty one . `` Thou hadst him living ; the dead is mine . '' `` Thine ! '' returned the other , shuddering . `` Well hast thou spoken ; the dead is thine . ''
The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look , but a wild-and mournful expression passed across the features XXXXX the gentle one , and , weak and helpless , she sank down on the bed , her head pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark locks .
As about between betwixt hast in like of that to