She moved, and held the glass to his lips. Bravely he lifted his hand,
and tried to hold it himself. He drank a little of the stimulant, and
then his pale head sank back, with the short, fair hair about his
forehead, like a glory.
"Ah yes!" he said, speaking more easily, a moment later. "Death could
never be so near but that you might stand between him and me--if you
would," he added, so softly that the three words just reached her ears,
as the far echo of sad music, full of beseeching tenderness.
Still she held his hand, and gazed down into his face. They had told her
long ago that he was dying of love for her. In that moment she believed
it true. He seemed to tell her so, to be telling it with his last
breath. And each breath might be the last. Science could not save him.
Physicians disagreed--the great authority himself could not say whether
he was to live or die. He fainted, fell back, seemed dead already, and
her voice and touch brought him to life, happy for an instant, hoping
still and living only by the beating of hope's wings. And with all that,
though she did not love him, he was to her the dearest of all living
beings. Holding his hand still, she looked upward, as though to be alone
with herself for one breathing space. But as she stood there, she
pressed his fingers little by little more tightly, not knowing what she
did, so that he wondered.
Then she bent down again, and steadily gazed into the upturned blue
eyes, and once more smoothed away the fair hair from the pallid brow.
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