She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, and the embrace of the two lovers frightened those who beheld it. Stephanie burst into tears.
Suddenly the tears ceased to flow; she lay in his arms a dead weight, as if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said faintly:
“Farewell, Philip!... I love you.... farewell!”
“She is dead!” cried the colonel, unclasping his arms.
The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece in his arms as a young man might have done; he carried her to a stack of wood and set her down. He looked at her face, and laid a feeble hand, tremulous with agitation, upon her heart—it beat no longer.
“Can it really be so?” he said, looking from the colonel, who stood there motionless, to Stephanie’s face. Death had invested it with a radiant beauty, a transient aureole, the pledge, it may be, of a glorious life to come.
“Yes, she is dead.”
“Oh, but that smile!” cried Philip; “only see that smile. Is it possible?”
“She has grown cold already,” answered M. Fanjat.
M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from the sight; then he stopped, and whistled the air that the mad Stephanie had understood; and when he saw that she did not rise and hasten to him, he walked away, staggering like a drunken man, still whistling, but he did not turn again.