"An hour later, one of many messengers who were searching for Pym met him, and told him that Lilama was found. He hastened to the house in which they had found her--a small frame structure, the residence of her former nurse. "At the entrance of this house stood Peters, waiting for his young friend; and as Pym felt the hand of the old sailor, put forth to stop him in his breathless haste, and as he looked into the hard, rugged face of his old friend, he knew that he must nerve himself for a shock. Alas! His surmise was only too correct. They entered the main room of the house together, Peters in the rear. Drawing aside from the entrance to the room a portière--Peters had already visited the room--Pym passed in, Peters remaining on the outer side of the curtained doorway, that he might prevent others from following, or even from viewing the young friend who was now to receive one of the keenest stabs with which Destiny ever pierces the human heart. "For a moment Pym would wholly have mistaken the scene before him, had Peters not said a word of warning as the portière fell behind his young friend. "On the lounge which stood against the farther wall as he entered, lay an elderly woman, apparently asleep; and covering her were the outer wraps--scanty, indeed, for such a day--of Lilama. On the left, as Pym swept at a glance the apartment, he saw the maid Ixza, reclining in a large chair; she, also, to all appearances, was asleep. Then he saw his wife. She crouched on the floor at the foot of the lounge, only her wealth of light golden hair at first visible. Stepping to her side, Pym saw her, as many times in the ducal gardens he had seen her drop to the ground in her girlish fashion, to rest. Her arms were intertwined upon the foot of the lounge, her head resting upon them; and there the tired, childlike young wife had gone to sleep--forever. "How beautiful she was in death! The gentle hand that had never touched the person of another but in helpfulness--how fair, how pallid; the fond sweet eyes that knew no glance but that of love and kindness--they were almost hidden by the drooping lids; the tenderest, loveliest face the sunlight ever kissed, smiled upward at him as he gazed--his heart felt colder than was this dear form he dropped beside and clasped. But the lips--the ripe red lips--the rapturous, maidenly lips, the first touch of which had raised him forever from the coarse earth--the arch lips that had bewitched him with their own seductive smile, and could not shape themselves to harsher act than pouting--a fleeting pout, that captivated ere it vanished--he could not look at them in death--he could not. "Sweet child of a weird land and a strange people! She was one of those whose spotless souls need not the purifying fire of a long earthly life. For Pym, now and later, the sorrow and the yearning void; for her, only an earlier advancement.