“Kiss me,” she whispered faintly.
All his manhood sorely shaken, he stooped to bestow the caress. Only once in that last quiet minute of life—for death-struggle there was none—the white lips moved; and the Sergeant, bending down his ear, caught what may have been an appeal to the Father’s mercy, but Ellis always believed it was a man’s name.
She sighed once or twice wearily, gasped a little and, leaning her head back with a slight shiver, the poor girl’s spirit went forth into the Night.
For a long time Benton never stirred. A sense of utter desolation, he knew not why, seemed to gather all around him. Inheriting from his mother a strongly impressionable nature, he was always chivalrously predisposed towards women and, somehow, complete stranger to him though the unfortunate waif was, the inexpressible pathos of her lonely, tragic death stirred all his being with a great, compassionate pity.
Suddenly he broke down and burst out sobbing, with the deep, convulsive emotion terrible to witness in a strong man; then, throwing his arms about the dead girl, he fell to his knees and, gazing imploringly into her quiet face, held her tightly, as if that firm clasp would hold her back one step on the road along which the messengers of God had beckoned her.
Would those with whom he was a byword for hard sternness of character have known him then?
The light of the lamp sank lower, flickered a little, and was gone. Worn out, mentally and bodily, the bowed head of the tired, kneeling watcher gradually drooped forward until it rested upon the bosom of the motionless form. The still face had settled into the serene, peaceful grandeur of the death-calm. Beautiful she had been in life, aye, but never so beautiful as now.
Then, to the exhausted, sleeping man, there came a wondrous dream, and in it, behold! she appeared unto him again in all the glory of her youth, innocence, and beauty, clad in white and glistening raiment, with her arms outstretched to him from afar on High.
And, in her great, dark eyes, he seemed to see shining the love and pity of Mary Magdalene—she whom He denied not, but said: “Her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”