“Not without one word!” she said, with a small wooing moan. “It is only you and I.”
And at that, struggling back from the shadows, he raised leaden lids, and knowing her, faintly smiled. She tore a handkerchief from her breast, a little perfumed scrap of lace and cambric, and with it tried to staunch the gushing life. And then she bent her face, to catch the gasping words:
“What is it, most dear, most dear?”
“Believe nothing—only my deathless love.”
“And mine—O, and mine!”
His left arm crooked feebly a moment, and then fell. A spasm of scorn twitched his dying features:
“In the back—there were three of them—and one a woman.”
Again the murmur tailed off and ceased. In a numb agony she spoke the name that was only hers. “Take me with you,” she whispered, with a quivering sigh: “O, take me, take me with you!”
And then suddenly and strongly he rose in her arms, and an unearthly light, great and triumphant, was in his eyes, and he spoke with a clear voice:
“Sweet—in the North—in the beautiful gardens—we shall meet in three——”