He looked and looked with a gaze that seemed as if it would consume her. And at last he leaned over her, with arms outspread, and touched her sunny, disordered hair with his lips. It was the lightest touch, far too light to awaken her. But, as if some happy thought had filtered down through the deeps of her repose, she stirred in her sleep. She turned her face up to him with the faint smile of a slumbering child.
"Good night!" she murmured drowsily.
Her eyes half-opened upon him. She gave him her lips.
And as he stooped, with a great tremor, to kiss them, "Good night, dear—Guy!" Her voice was fainter, more indistinct. She sank back again into that deep slumber from which she had barely been roused.
And Burke went from her with the flower-like memory of her kiss upon his lips, and the dryness of ashes in his mouth.
It was several hours later that Sylvia awoke to full consciousness and a piercing realization of a strange presence that watched by her side.
She opened her eyes wide with a curious conviction that there was a cat in the room, and then all in a moment she met the cool, repellent stare of the black-browed doctor whom Burke had brought from Ritzen.
A little quiver of repugnance went through her at the sight, swiftly followed by a sharp thrill of indignation. What was he doing seated there by her side—this swarthy-faced stranger whom she had disliked instinctively at first sight?
And then—suddenly it rushed through her mind that he was the bearer of evil tidings, that he had come to tell her that Guy was dead. She raised herself sharply.
"Oh, what is it? What is it?" she gasped. "Tell me quickly! It's better for me to know. It's better for me to know."