He whispered:
"It was your unselfishness, your sweetness, and—you—all of you—yes—your beauty—the loveliness of you, too! I could not put it from me; I knew that night that I loved you—and to-day they said you were going—so I came with my Christmas gift—the sorry, sorry gift—myself——"
"Ah!" she whispered, clinging closer. "And what of my gift—my twin gifts—there, in your studio! Oh, you don't know, you don't know——"
"Dearest!"
"No—you can never know how much easier it had been for me to die than to love—as I have loved a man this day."
"Confound you, Williams," I said, blinking.
But he did not hear me, sitting there in a literary revery, mentally repolishing the carefully considered paragraphs with which he had just regaled me.
"Williams?"
"What?"