le to her that anything she loved so much should die. It
was not, she pleaded, as if she had been happy, as if her love had any
chance of a return, or had asked for anything better than to spend
itself like this continually.

And as she sat on watching, it seemed to her that it was better as it
was. Better that love should live by immortal things, by things
intangible, invisible, by pity, by faith, by hope, breaking little by
little every link with earth. She tried to make herself believe this
pleasant theory, as she had tried many a day and many a night before,
her heart having nothing else to warm it but the fire of its own
sacrifice. It was better as it was.

And yet, she said again, in this last six weeks he had been hers in a
way in which he could be no other woman's, not even Audrey's. He was
hers by her days of service, her nights of watching, by all that had
gone before, by her part in his new life. After all, that could never be
undone. She was almost happy.

Ted took her place for an hour in the evening, but that was all the rest
she gave herself. She meant to sit up with Vincent again to-night.

"Do you know, Kathy, your eyes are very pretty."

It had struck midnight, and Vincent had been awake and looking at her
for the last two minutes. She smiled and blushed, and that made her
whole face look pretty too. And as he looked into her eyes the blindness
fell from his own, and he saw as a dying man sometimes does see.

"Come here, Sis." He stretched out his arm on the counterpane, and as
she knelt beside him he put back her hair from her forehead.

"I wonder if I was wrong when I thought you couldn't love anybody?"

Then she knew that he was dying.

"Yes, very wrong indeed. For--I loved you then, Vincent." Her face was
transfigured as she spoke. He had to be spared all sudden emotions, but
she knew that _her_ confession would do him no harm. And indeed he took
it quite calmly, without the least change of pulse.

"I'm not ungrateful----"

"There's nothing to be grateful for. I couldn't help it."

"I would have loved you more, Kathy, if it hadn't been for Audrey."

He spoke without emotion, in the tone of a man stating a simple matter
of fact. Then he remarked in the same matter-of-fact voice that, as it
happened, he was dying, so it made no difference. Perhaps he wanted her
to know that a grave was ready for the secret she had just told him.
There was no need to remind her of that,--she was sure of