She had forgotten her peril, forgotten about the fire that was above and around, as she looked at his eyes, and, holding the maimed right arm, felt the hot blood welling through her kerchief and running over her hand.
“I pray you, oh, I pray you, come outside. There is still time.”
Again he shook his head. “My time is up. I do not want to live. I have not your love. I could never win it, and if I went outside I should be captured and sent to prison. Will you give me my absolution?”
“What do you mean?” And in her trembling concern for him—in the intensity of her pity, sorrow, care for him—she drew his wounded hand to her and pressed it against her heaving bosom.
“What I mean is, can you forgive me?”
“Indeed—indeed I do.”
“What—all I have done?”
“All.”
She saw only a dying man before her, a man who might be saved if he would, but would not because her love was everything to him, and that he never, never could gain. Would she make no concession to him? could she not draw a few steps nearer? As she looked into his face and held his bleeding arm to her bosom, pity overpowered her—pity, when she saw how strong had been this wild and wicked man’s love. Now she truly realized its depth, its intensity, and its tenderness alternating with stormy blasts of passion, as he wavered between hope and fear, and the despair that was his when he knew he must lose her.
Then she stooped, and, the tears streaming over her face, she kissed him on his brow, and then on his lips, and then drew back, still holding his maimed hand, with both of hers crossed over it, to her heaving bosom. Kneeling, she had her eyes on his, and his were on hers—steady, searching, but with a gentle light in them. And as she thus looked she became unconscious, and sank, still holding his hand, on the floor.