I did not like to wound him by pretending not to see his idea, but as
I did not yet understand the cause of his laughter, I asked him. As
he answered me his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different
tone,
"Oh, it was the grim irony of it all, this so lovely lady garlanded
with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered
if she were truly dead, she laid in that so fine marble house in that
lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the
mother who loved her, and whom she loved, and that sacred bell going
'Toll! Toll! Toll!' so sad and slow, and those holy men, with the
white garments of the angel, pretending to read books, and yet all the
time their eyes never on the page, and all of us with the bowed head.
And all for what? She is dead, so! Is it not?"
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