not interrupt me, my dear; I know what you would say. How should you
love me? I am an old man--very old, older than my years." Again he
sighed, more bitterly, as he confessed what he had never owned before.
The Duchessa was too much astonished to answer him.

"Corona," he said again, "I shall not live much longer."

"Ah, do not speak like that," she cried suddenly. "I trust and pray that
you have yet many years to live." Her husband looked keenly at her.

"You are so good," he answered, "that you are really capable of uttering
such a prayer, absurd as it would seem."

"Why absurd? It is unkind of you to say it--"

"No, my dear; I know the world very well. That is all. I suppose it is
impossible for me to make you understand how I love you. It must seem
incredible to you, in the magnificence of your strength and beautiful
youth, that a man like me--an artificial man"--he laughed scornfully--"a
creature of paint and dye--let me be honest--a creature with a wig,
should be capable of a mad passion. And yet, Corona," he added, his thin
cracked voice trembling with a real emotion, "I do love you--very dearly.
There are two things that make my life bitter: the regret that I did not
meet you, that you were not born, when I was young; and worse than that,
the knowledge that I must leave you very soon--I, the exhausted dandy,
the shadow of what I was, tottering to my grave in a last vain effort to
be young for your sake--for your sake, Corona dear. Ah, it is
contemptible!" he almost moaned.

Corona hid her eyes in her hand. She was taken off her guard by his
strange speech.

"Oh, do not speak like that--do not!" she cried. "You make me very
unhappy. Do I reproach you? Do I ever make you feel that you are--older
than I? I will lead a new life; you shall never think of it again.
You are too kind--too good for me."

"No one ever said I was too good before," replied the old man with a
shade of sadness. "I am glad the one person who finds me good, should be
the only one for whose sake I ever cultivated goodness. I could have
been different, Corona, if I had had you for my wife for thirty years,
instead of five. But it is too late now. Before long I shall be dead, and
you will be free."

"What makes you say such things to me?" asked Corona. "Can you think I am
so vile, so ungrateful, so unloving, as to wish your death?"

"Not unloving; no, my dear child. But not loving, either. I do not ask
impossibilities. You will mourn