"Armand——" she began, choking.
"Yes," he said with more strength, "I know. It is ... a long business, it seems. They do not shoot very straight, the Orleanists ... I should like to see you better ... if you would move a candle ... Merci." He relapsed into French. "My dear, you would make a beautiful angel, you who believe in the angels. I shall not see a fairer ... Oh, do not be anxious; M. le Curé ... has arranged all that."
She saw now that he was in deadly pain, and the bantering words went past her in a passion of pity and remorse. Her scalding tears fell on his cold hand, and on her own, that clasped it.
"Armand, Armand, forgive me!"
"Ma chère, for what? I thought it was to be ... the other way." A little tortured laugh came from him. "You, to make the ... the conventional death-bed scene! Was that why ... you came all this distance?"
"I came when I heard that the rising had failed ... when I thought ... O Armand, cannot something be done!"
"You were really too kind, mon amie. It is such a long way ... Did you have a ... good journey?"
"Armand, for God's sake!" cried Horatia, agonised at the tone. But he had closed his eyes again; perhaps he did not even hear her. And lying there helpless, broken, ghastly, he was suddenly once more all that he had ever been to her—the lover, triumphant and adorable, who had kissed her in the field of stubble, the married lover of those days in Brittany ... But it was too late now, she saw that; not only too late to save his body, but to make any appeal to the spirit that was leaving it. The time for that was past.
He spoke again, without opening his eyes, very faintly but just as politely. "That glass on the table ... if I might trouble you..." When she stooped over him with it she remembered the doctor's injunction, and, slipping her hand with all possible precaution under his head, raised it only a little way. Even at that movement a contraction passed over his face, and he shut his teeth on a groan. Then he drank, and she lowered his head to the pillow. She longed to touch his hair again, and dared not.
"Thank you," said Armand, and lay silent for a moment, the sweat gathering on his forehead. Then, with an effort, he began again. "I should like, ... while I can ... to speak about the boy.... Perhaps ... an English school ... I believe I put that ... in my will the other day ... but I cannot remember.... He will be like ... you ... when he grows up."