All, all the qualities, which had in time to him stood as divine expression of a beautiful decree, had passed into nothingness, had left no more behind than the wind leaves on the rock. All that was sweet and pure, guileless and joyous, vital and fresh, had gone away for ever, and left nothing. Why should he call this Dora? It could not hear him. It could not answer him. He might as well throw up his arms and plead his piteous grief into the vacant air. Dora was dead, and this thing here was no more than the mask of Dora. Only the mask of Dora, and yet a mask which he could not preserve. To-morrow they would take this coffin away and put it somewhere or other, he knew not, he cared not where. There would be a ceremony, at which people would look solemn, out of a general sense of fitness, rather than because of individual grief. They would lower that coffin down nine feet or so into the solid earth, and cover it up, and then come away. And the men whose business it was to attend to the material portions of the burial would stop at the first public-house and have a drink, after they had buried his Dora. Buried his Dora! No, they could not. They could never bury her. They might bury this thing here--this phantom--this mask--this statue. They might put this away for ever, and in the inviolate darkness of the tomb it might crumble away and be no more to the future than a few old bones of an unknown woman. But for him they could never bury Dora. They could never bury his darling Dora! What! Could it be that these pallid lips now lying smooth and close together had moulded his name, had whispered into his ear, had taken his kisses as the rich guerdon offered there for admission to the citadel of her heart, as the supreme offer of a subdued nature at the final barrier of an opulent town? Those the lips, those the material lips, those the substantial lips which his lips had touched, and which, with such excellent flattery to his love, allowed themselves to be touched by his, not shrinking from his, not even seeming to shrink from his, but even slowly and modestly advancing to his with the whole head, the whole neck, the whole form---- Were they now going to bury these lips, this head, this neck, this form? Darling, where are you? I am here. Is there any place but here, where you may be? You have left something behind you as you went away. They have put it in a coffin. It is no good to me. Why did it not go with you? Why am I here? Where am I? Who am I that am here? I am not he that loved you once any more than this here is what I once loved. I shall wait until I go away before I love again. And when I have gone away as you have gone away I will love only you. And here upon the lips that are not yours, but which are the likest yours I ever saw, I swear this oath. So help me, God.