My companion did not speak; my eyes searched his blanched face in vain for comfort--a wild impulse seized me; I grasped the candle in my hand, and, with a hasty look around the apartment, hurried to the bed and drew aside the curtains. I did not swoon or cry; I did not even drop the candle from my hand, nor loose the grasp with which I held back the curtains; but, with glazed eyes and freezing veins, gazed steadily at what lay before me. Pale with the unmistakable pallor of death, one arm thrown above his head, the other buried in his bosom, his dark tangled curls lying distinct against the pillow, his manly limbs rigid--a crimson stream that had stained his breast, and was creeping down upon the bed, gave awful proof that Victor and I had indeed parted forever--that my wretched lover lay dead before me. Brought so suddenly to my sight, there was nothing in that moment of the remorse and the lingering tenderness that after the first shock nearly deprived me of reason; it was only horror--staring, ghastly horror--at the sight of his dead body--at the thought of his lost soul; the words that rang in my head, and the first that struggled to my lips were: "God have mercy on his soul! God have mercy on his soul!" Dead--without a prayer--dead--by his own hand--cast out forever from God's mercy--a wailing, damned, lost soul through all eternity. I stood as if turned to stone; my companion, in an agony of grief and consternation, had thrown himself on his knees beside the bed; his iron fortitude broken down before this awful judgment that, laying bare the anguish of the past, had interwoven itself so strangely with the present; the unerring retribution that had worked out this end to sins so long ago committed.