I could not bear it, and at last took my resolve and dismissed
Velna, forbidding her to return till summoned.
"Ah!" said Eunane, "you send her away that she may not see the last.
Is it so near?"
"No, darling!" I replied (she, like Eveena, had learnt the meaning of
one or two expressions of human affection in my own tongue), "but I
have that to say which I would not willingly say in her presence. You
dread death not as a short terrible pain, and for you it will not be
so, not as a short sleep, but as eternal senselessness and
nothingness. Has it never seemed to you strange that, loving Eveena as
I do, _I_ do not fear to die? Though you did not know it, I have lived
almost since first you knew me under the threat of death; and death
sudden, secret, without warning, menacing me every day and every hour.
And yet, though death meant leaving her and leaving her to a fate I
could not foresee, I have been able to look on it steadily. Kneeling
here, I know that I am very probably giving my life to the same end as
yours. I do not fear. That may not seem strange to you; but Eveena
knows all I know, and I could scarcely keep Eveena away.
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