And yet, now and again, time played her false, and she got through too soon. It was then that she realised the sensation of death. After the first terrible inanition, those moments lived without “living” would begin to assume a sort of preciousness, to acquire holy sensations of their own. “I am dead,” she would say to herself: “I really am dead; I lie motionless, hearing, feeling, smelling, seeing, thinking nothing. I lie impalpable--yes, that is the word--completely impalpable; above me I can see the vast blue blue, and all around me the vast brown brown--it is something like what I remember of Egypt. And there is a kind of singing in my ears, that are really not ears now, a grey, thin sound, like--ah!--Maeterlinck, and a very faint honey smell, like--er--Omar Khayyám. And I just move as a blade of grass moves in the wind. Yes, I am dead. It feels exactly like it.” And a new exhilaration would seize her, for she felt that, in that sensation of death, she was living! At lunch, or it might be dinner, she would tell her newest man, already past the prime of her interest, exactly what it felt like to be dead. “It’s not really disagreeable,” she would say; “it has its own flavour. You know, like Turkish coffee, just a touch of india-rubber in it--I mean the coffee.” And the poor man would sneeze, and answer: “Yes, I know a little what you mean; asphodels, too; you get it in Greece. My only difficulty is that, if you _are_ dead, you know--you--er--are.” She would not admit that; it sounded true, but the man was getting stupid--to be dead like that would be the end of novelty, which was, to her, unthinkable. Once, in a new book, she came across a little tale of a man who “lived” in Persia, of all heavenly places, frantically pursuing sensation. Entering one day the courtyard of his house, he heard a sigh behind him, and, looking round, saw his own spirit, apparently in the act of breathing its last. The little thing, dry and pearly-white as a seed-pod of “honesty,” was opening and shutting its mouth, for all the world like an oyster trying to breathe. “What is it?” he said; “you don’t seem well.” And his spirit answered: “All right, all right! Don’t distress yourself--it’s nothing! I’ve just been crowded out. That’s all. Good-bye!” And, with a wheeze, the little thing went flat, fell onto the special blue tiles he had caused to be put down there, and lay still. He bent to pick it up, but it came off on his thumb in a smudge of grey-white powder.