Some sort of a sound certainly echoed in his ears; it resolved itself into her voice.
Marie's voice calling out loud and strange and incessant, with incoherent words. He tore open the door wildly and struck one of his precious matches.
She lay there among the pillows, with vacant, wide-open eyes fixed on the ceiling, babbling in wild delirium of cool springs and fountains, of summer showers, of falling dew, her parched lips panting with fever.
"Oh, my God! if the world were mine, I would give it for one draught of water for my suffering little darling!" he cried aloud, with the agony of a man's heart driven to bay.
The dim flame of the match died into darkness again, and he stood by the bed, holding her hot little hand in his, listening in agony to her delirious ravings.
"This is the cruelest hour of my life!" he muttered. "Death, when it comes, will not be half so bitter."
By the aid of another match he looked at his watch. It was five o'clock, and outside he knew that the day was near its dawn; but within the chamber where he watched by the side of the dying girl all was thick darkness and gloom, and his stock of matches was running so low that he dared not light one as often as he wished.
Agonized thoughts kept him grim company while he stood listening to her ravings for water to cool her poor parched tongue and lips.
Soon she would be dead, and her harrowing sufferings all over. Then he would be alone with the dead girl until death mercifully came to his release. Here they would lie, uncoffined and unburied for years, moldering into dust, their cruel fate forever hidden from men. In his far-off home his sisters would grieve for him awhile, then he would be forgotten.
The tiny flame of another match flared into the air at six o'clock. Her ravings had ceased, the hot flush had left her face, the little palms were cool again. She lay with wide-open eyes upon the pillow, breathing faintly—so faintly that he looked for every breath to be her last.