He lay and did not stir. “Yolande!” he whispered.
She sighed, and clasped her hands; she answered with the plaint, if not in the words, of love-lorn Madeline:—
“O, leave me not in this eternal woe,
For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go.”
She moved, and was kneeling by him, pleading with hurrying sighs,—
“The sin was mine—the sin was mine! And, O! a fruitless sacrifice! So pale, so worn—O, thing without a heart, to have caused this cruel sickness in my love!”
“Yolande!” A wilder thrill gave out the word.
“Louis; if thou couldst still find that in me worth living for! Ah, do not die! I would be so loving and so penitent. Not forward—no. The shame in me’s an ecstasy. I cry to have you humble me.”
“Lily of Savoy—the white lily—and mine!”
A gloating transport whispered in his voice.