"How can you blame yourself for all these things? It is only because you have been so ill and weak that you have got such fancies into your head; but now that I am here, and you know how much I love you——"
She shuddered spasmodically, and a look of intense pain and wretchedness came over her features.
"Never speak of love any more, unless you wish to kill me."
Uros looked at her astonished.
"I know that in all this I am entirely to blame; but if a woman can atone for her sin by suffering, I think——"
"Then you do not love me any more?" asked Uros, dejectedly.
She looked up into his eyes, and, in that deep and earnest glance of hers, she seemed to give up her soul to him. If months ago she had loved him with all the levity of a reckless child, now she loved him with all the pathos of a woman.
Uros caught her in his arms and pressed her to his heart. She leaned her head on his shoulder, as if unable to keep it upright; an ashy paleness spread itself over all her features, her very lips lost all their colour, her eyelids drooped; she had fainted. Uros, terrified, thought she was dying, nay, dead.
"Milena, my love, my angel, speak to me, for Heaven's sake!" he cried.
After a few moments, however, she slowly began to recover, and then burst into a hysteric fit of sobbing.