"Vanity of sickness! fierce extremes, In their continuance, will not feel themselves. Death having preyed upon the outward parts, Leaves them invisible; and his siege is now Against the mind, which he pricks and wounds With many legions of strange fantasies, Which, in their throng and press to that last hold, Confound themselves." He fell asleep; and, without prolonging our description further, suffice it that poor Denzil never woke again, but passed peacefully away... Rose sat for a time in a stupor, like one in a dream. Summoned by her first wild cry, the Khanum was by her side now. Denzil, so long her care, her soul, her all, lay there, it would seem, as usual--lay there as she had seen him for many days; yet why was it that his presence, and that rigid angularity and stillness of outline, so appalled her now? As the crisis so evidently had drawn near, strongly and wildly in the girl's heart came the crave for medical, for religious, for any Christian aid or advice; but there none could be had, any more than if she had stood by the savage shores of the Albert Nyanza; and now the dread crisis was past! So, from time to time the pale girl found herself gazing on the paler face of the dead--of him who had so loved her--gazing with that mingled emotion of incredulity, wonder, and terror, awe and sorrow, which passeth all experience or description. There was no change in the air; there was no change in the light: one was still and calm, and laden with perfume; the other as bright and clear as ever: and the blaze of yellow sunshine poured into the room precisely as it did an hour ago; but now it fell on the face of the dead! And the clear voice of the pagoda-thrush sang on; but how monotonously now! Rose was stunned, and sat crouching on the floor, with her face covered by her hands, her head between her knees, and her bright dishevelled hair falling forward in silky volume well nigh to her feet. Ignorant of what to say, or how to soothe grief so passionate, the Khanum, unveiled, hung over her in kindness of heart, but with one prevailing idea--that the death of an idolater must be very terrible; that already the fiends must be contesting for the possession of his soul; that the prescribed portion of the Koran had not been read to him; and even if it had been, what would it avail now, till that day when the solid mountains and the soft white clouds should be rolled away together by the blast of the trumpet of Azrael? So his last thoughts had been of his dead mother, as Rose remembered, and not of her. Her father was dead; Mabel was gone to Toorkistan, too surely beyond ransom or redemption: oh, why was _she_ left to live?