"The lines to Rose Chéri?"
"Yes. If I were going to be frightened— Ugh! I did have a black moment."
He drew her into his arms with a sheltering impulse.
"I had forgotten the verses were—"
"Oh, it wasn't the verses, it was the situation. He had loved her—"
"Yes, I remember; and she died."
"Isn't it queer that it should be left to poor Rose Chéri's lover to convince an American, with a very pessimistic lover of her own—left to Dumas to convince me of death? You know when Henri de Poincy came for you this afternoon?"
"I left you to rest and read up La Dame aux Camélias; not meditate on mortality."
"See how you've corrupted me. I was just dropping asleep over the play, when the book slipped, and the leaves turned back to the dedication of Diane. I read it. Quite suddenly"—she sat up, and her face was pale in the moonlight—"I realized Death. Not merely as a thing that might come to one's grandmother, but.... You see, I had considered it too much to realize it. But there was that dainty Rose Chéri before me. She had been loved—almost as well as I—"
"No, no." He pressed his lips on hers.