"Mem-Sahib—if the end comes now it will trouble him that he cannot keep his promise."
"He shall keep his promise. I will keep it for him. And you, Ayeshi—stay with me."
But he drew back, and the light died out of his face.
"This is the end, Mem-Sahib. His and mine. I loved him—I, too, would have given my life—remember that of me, Mem-Sahib."
She looked up at him, and the naked agony in his eyes was something that she indeed remembered long afterwards.
"I think he knows," she said.
He salaamed deeply.
"I will go and guard the door, Mem-Sahib."
He was gone without a sound. A shadow seemed to have passed from the room. His very voice had been so low, that now the silence flowed over it as though it had never been. Yet what he had said lingered.
Sigrid Fersen drew her chair close up to the bedside, and sat there chin in hand watching. The dim light of the lamp threw the shadow of Tristram's profile on to the white-washed wall beyond. Ugly enough—the pointed beard thrust out under the broad, unshapely nose—the big forehead made grotesque by the outline of disordered hair. But even the shadow gave a hint of what the face itself revealed in its unconsciousness. The mouth, tender and strong as a woman's may be, passionate and austere, laughter and the joy and love of life in the corners of the closed eyes, and over all, like a veil, pain. Quixote with a grain of English humour—Quixote at the end, vanquished and conquering.