The Dead Are Silent | Page 8

tortured into a ghastly
smile. She knows it is her own face, and it terrifies her. She sees that it
is frozen; that this hideous smile is frozen on it, and will always be

there, all her life. She tries to cry out. Two hands are laid on her
shoulders, and between her own face and the mirrored one her
husband's face pushes its way in; his eyes pierce into hers. She knows
that unless she is strong for this last trial all is lost. And she feels that
she is strong; she has regained control of her limbs, but the moment of
strength is short. She raises her hands to his, which rest on her
shoulders; she draws him down to her, and smiles naturally and
tenderly into his eyes.
She feels his lips on her forehead, and she thinks: "It is all a dream--he
will never tell--he will never take revenge like that--he is dead--really
dead--and the dead are silent--"
"Why did you say that?" she hears her husband's voice suddenly.
She starts. "What did I say?" And it seems to her as if she had told
everything, here at the table--aloud before every one--and again she
asks, shuddering before his horrified eyes, "What did I say?"
"The dead are silent," her husband repeats very slowly.
"Yes," she answers.
And she reads in his eyes that she can no longer hide anything from
him. They look long and silently at each other. "Put the boy to bed," he
says at last. "You have something to tell me, have you not?"
"Yes--"
She knows now that within a few moments she will tell this man
everything--this man, whom she has deceived for many years.
And while she goes slowly through the door, holding her boy, she feels
her husband's eyes still resting on her, and a great peace comes over her,
the assurance that now many things would be right again.

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