"Because I wanted you so much and I knew you would never have me if you thought he was still alive…. Your stupid promise. What are promises when one loves? I wanted you, Treevor, so much! So much!"
Some of the old fire flashed out of the dying eyes, a hungry, despairing look.
"Kiss me, Treevor. Say you forgive me."
But I could not. For the moment I was so stunned, so overwhelmed by this sudden revelation of her deception.
A deathly physical faintness was creeping over me; a sensation like the beginning of long-denied sleep which rolls at last like an unconquerable tide, obliterating everything, through the exhausted frame, was invading my whole body. I clasped one hand mechanically round the bed-rail to support myself, the ground seemed to lift and sway beneath my feet.
I looked down on the little oval face that had lived so near to me through the last year. How pale it was now, framed in the crimson mist that stretched across the bed! At the slight, exquisite body so often held in my arms. Was I to lose them now for all time?
"I did it all for you, because I wanted you so much. Do kiss me and say you forgive. I shall not rest through a thousand years if you will not."
Grey shadows were collecting in her face, some unseen hand seemed drawing the eternal veil between us. To me, life, with all its doings, was far away. I myself was standing in the uncertain mists of death. Wide, limitless, and grey, the great plains of the hereafter seemed opening before me, dim, silent, and mysterious.
Life, with its glare of colour, its triumphant music, its crash of sound, was far behind me, almost forgotten; like clouds of indefinable tint, piled up on some distant horizon, rose the memories of its loves, its woes, its crimes.
Her weak voice calling on me to forgive seemed to have little meaning to me now. I leant forward, clasping her dying body to me, and kissed her lips, murmuring some words of consolation. Then the grey mists rose up over my eyes sealing them, and I sank slowly into the perfect darkness.