Death
at the sword is the festival of trumpet and bugle and banner, with
glory ringing out around you and distant hearts thrilling through
yours. No gnawing disease can bring such hideous end as this; for that
is a fiend bred of your own flesh, and this--is it a fiend, this living
lump of appetites? What dread comes with the thought of perishing in
flames! but fire, let it leap and hiss never so hotly, is something too
remote, too alien, to inspire us with such loathly horror as a wild
beast; if it have a life, that life is too utterly beyond our
comprehension. Fire is not half ourselves; as it devours, arouses
neither hatred nor disgust; is not to be known by the strength of our
lower natures let loose; does not drip our blood into our faces from
foaming chaps, nor mouth nor snarl above us with vitality. Let us be
ended by fire, and we are ashes, for the winds to bear, the leaves to
cover; let us be ended by wild beasts, and the base, cursed thing howls
with us forever through the forest. All this she felt as she charmed
him, and what force it lent to her song God knows. If her voice should
fail! If the damp and cold should give her any fatal hoarseness! If all
the silent powers of the forest did not conspire to help her! The dark,
hollow night rose indifferently over her; the wide, cold air breathed
rudely past her, lifted her wet hair and blew it down again; the great
boughs swung with a ponderous strength, now and then clashed their iron
lengths together and shook off a sparkle of icy spears or some
long-lain weight of snow from their heavy shadows.
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