there is one thing, Paul.'

She stretched out her arms to him, and he bent his head so that she
might embrace him. He had always fought in his own heart for the fiction
that he loved her, and sometimes he had won in that difficult conflict;
now he was sure of it, and he put his arms about her. Was he to lose her
just as she revealed herself in this sweet way?

'Paul,' she asked him, 'are you sorry that I am going? Shall you
grieve--a little?'

'You mustn't talk so, dear,' said Paul; 'you break my heart.'

He spoke with a genuine vehemence. He was astonished at the strength of
his own feeling.

'Then,' she said, 'do this one little thing for me. Whisper. Let me
whisper. Can you hear me like that?

'Yes, sweetheart, yes. What is it?'

'Make me an honest woman before I die,' said Annette, in a voice that
barely reached him. 'I was brought up to be a good girl, and I have
suffered--oh Paul, dear, I have suffered! Promise me.'

Here were depths he had not looked for or suspected, and he thought
within himself how blind he had been; how much he had misread her;
how like a doll he had treated her. His whole heart smote him with
self-scorn, with pity, with remorse.

'You are not dying, dear Annette,' he said; 'you will live, and we shall
love each other a thousand times better than we have ever done before,
because this fear of yours has broken the ice between us.'

'No, Paul,' she answered. Her arms fell languidly on the counterpane. 'I
shall not live, but promise me that. Let me die happy. Tu sais, cheri,
que ma mere est morte. Je voudrais encontrer ma mere au ciel, comme
fille honnete, ne c'est pas? Ah! pour l'amour de Dieu, Paul!'

'My darling,' he answered, 'I'll do it! I'll do anything. But don't talk
nonsense about dying. We shall have many a happy year together yet.'

It was his facile, ardent way to think of himself as brokenhearted if
he lost her, and he had never seen her in such a mood as this before,
or anything approaching to it It was no pretence for the moment that he
loved her. He felt for the first time that their two hearts were near.
And though he had been loyal to her, and through times good, bad and
indifferent had brought her of his best, and had done what he could in a
cool, husbandly sort of way to make her happy, he knew his moral debt
to her, and was sore about it, and had been sore about it often. It had
never been in his mind for an instant to evade his burden, even when
he had felt t