“God knows,” he continued slowly, “that it would be pleasant to me to believe what you say—to deceive myself, to sweeten my great loneliness by your loyal duty, by your tender service—by all the gracious phantoms you would conjure from the grave of your dead love—but I am not the coward who would take your sweet self-sacrifice.”
“You make me a coward!” came her voice, very low. “What am I to say?”
“Farewell,” he answered.
He heard her move and saw the blur of her pink skirt pass out of the firelight.
“No,” she said, “I will be true—I will keep my vows—I have no right——”
“Nor I,” he put in quickly. He paused a moment, then said quietly, “I have no career before me. I shall always be my father’s pensioner, and I shall always be an invalid—and, though no one knows it, the doctor warned me that I have only a few years to live.”
“Oh!” shuddered Clémence.
He cautiously moved a little nearer to her, treading delicately and feeling his way.
“There is nothing to grieve over—and nothing to regret,” he said, “save that I ever entangled your life with mine, Mademoiselle. Yet it has given me the very sweetest memories—and afterwards, in the long years ahead of you, when you are honoured and loved as you are worthy of being, it cannot lessen your happiness to remember that you were the fairest, most sacred thing in the life of a man who did not know—much joy.”
He paused and coughed. She was sobbing childishly.