“He is ill, is he not?” she at last faltered.
“Yes,” he said, “he is ill.”
“I knew it at once when I saw you,” she replied. “I knew when he was not here that he must be ill. He is very ill, is he not?” she persisted.
As he did not answer but grew still paler, she looked at him fixedly. And on the instant she saw the shadow of death upon him; on his hands that still trembled, that had assisted the dying man; on his sad face; in his troubled eyes, which still retained the reflection of the death agony; in the neglected and disordered appearance of the physician who, for twelve hours, had maintained an unavailing struggle against death.
She gave a loud cry:
“He is dead!”
She tottered, and fell fainting into the arms of Ramond, who with a great sob pressed her in a brotherly embrace. And thus they wept on each other’s neck.
When he had seated her in a chair, and she was able to speak, he said:
“It was I who took the despatch you received to the telegraph office yesterday, at half-past ten o’clock. He was so happy, so full of hope! He was forming plans for the future—a year, two years of life. And this morning, at four o’clock, he had the first attack, and he sent for me. He saw at once that he was doomed, but he expected to last until six o’clock, to live long enough to see you again. But the disease progressed too rapidly. He described its progress to me, minute by minute, like a professor in the dissecting room. He died with your name upon his lips, calm, but full of anguish, like a hero.”
Clotilde listened, her eyes drowned in tears which flowed endlessly. Every word of the relation of this piteous and stoical death penetrated her heart and stamped itself there. She reconstructed every hour of the dreadful day. She followed to its close its grand and mournful drama. She would live it over in her thoughts forever.