"Hold me closer, Paul, and teach me to be brave!"
They clung together in an agony too poignant for words, too mighty for tears! And of the unutterable madness and anguish of those last bitter kisses of farewell, no mortal pen can write!
But theirs had been from the beginning a mad love—a mad, hopeless, fatal love—and it could bring neither of them happiness nor peace—nothing but the bitterness of eternal regret!
And thus the day—their one day of life—came to an end!
That evening, from the hotel at Lucerne, two telegrams flashed over the wires. One was addressed to the Count de Roannes, Paris, and read as follows:
"Shall reach Paris Monday afternoon.—Opal."
The other was addressed to Sir Paul Verdayne, at Venice, and was not signed at all, saying simply,
"A son awaits his father in Lucerne."