To Have & To Hold by Mary Johnson Chapter 37 Page 10

I said. “It is not just that you should live.”

He gazed at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless lips. “Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy,” he said. “Within a week I shall be gone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead upon the floor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons, had Nicolo whom men called the Black Death, — poisons swift and strong, or subtle and slow. Day and night, the earth and sunshine have become hateful to me. I will go to the fires of hell, and see if they can make me forget, — can make me forget the face of a woman.” He was speaking half to me, half to himself. “Her eyes are dark and large,” he said, “and there are shadows beneath them, and the mark of tears. She stands there day and night with her eyes upon me.