“Now, remember,” Sister Virginie was saying, “you must not say one word in there. She will look, that is all. But how she looks, as though she is listening to the choir of angels!” “Sister Virginie,” I said, “do you promise me that she will not die?” And Sister Virginie smiled up at me with a gaiety that I have only seen on the still faces of women in old French books. “To-day we have thought she will not die,” she said, “for last night we gave her a _piqure du cœur_....” II I wish I could describe that room in which I saw Iris lying, for it was such a strange room to find in a nursing-home, and you would not have been surprised to find the like in one of the hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the truth is that I never yet was sure of the appointments of any room I might find myself in, except maybe that it was large or small, that it was panelled or papered or distempered, and whether or not you walked on a carpet, a strip of oil-cloth or a parquet floor. It seemed to me that I must walk a long way to the bed near the window. It was a great four-poster bed, and it had a very tall head, of carved oak. There seemed to be but dark wood in that strange sick-room, and the perfume of wood. Beneath my careful feet was a narrow strip of drugget slanting from the door across to the bed, but on all sides of this strip the floor shone vast and brown in the dim light of a shaded lamp that stood on the heavy oak mantelpiece. Never was one so little conscious of the odours of a sick-room, but, although I wouldn’t swear to it, there might have been the faint tang of furniture-polish, and maybe, as I stole nearby the great wide bed by the large window, that was the scent of Napier’s roses, which spread their heads from a _carafe_ on a small table near the foot of the bed. Sitting against the _carafe_ was a large white doll with her head asleep among Napier’s roses and a red silk handkerchief tied around her wrist. Ah, Mio Mi Marianne, unrepentant Magdalen, even the toys of your sisters heed your dominion! It was dark by the bed, for the light from the lamp did not reach nearly so far. The blind was not more than half-lowered down the large window, and across the courtyard I could just see the light within the lodge and, on the sill outside, the shape of a pineapple and some grapes on a plate. The tall oak panel at the head cast a black shadow over the darkness of the bed, and at first I could no more than make out the shape of Iris’s head. I could hear the faint hush of her breathing. Boy’s head, curly head, white and tiger-tawny. But gone now the tawny pride of the tiger, gone the curls. Very tidily brushed her hair was, tidily swept back from the forehead, tidily lying on each cheek. It would be damp, I thought, to lie so flat. Her head lay like a dark flower on the pillow.