"Darkness--darkness!" she muttered hoarsely,--"and the white faces of
dead things! There--there they lie!--all still, at the foot of the black
chasm--their mouths move without sound--what--what are they saying? I
cannot hear--ask them to speak louder--louder! Ah!" and she uttered a
terrified scream that made the rafters ring. "They move!--they stretch
out their hands--cold, cold hands!--they are drawing me down to
them--down--down--to that darkness! Hold me--hold me! don't let me go to
them--Lord, Lord be merciful to me--let me live--live--" Suddenly she
drew back in deadly horror, gesticulating with her tremulous lean hands
as though it shut away the sight of some loathsome thing unveiled to her
view. "Who is it"--she asked in an awful, shuddering whisper--"who is it
that says there is no hell? _I see it_!" Still retreating backwards,
backwards--the clammy dew of death darkening her affrighted
countenance,--she turned her glazing eyes for the last time on Gueldmar.
Her lips twitched into a smile of dreadful mockery.
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