Fire flashed from his face at the call.  He took a step toward her.  A shout, half-muffled, sounded from outside the window.  Instantly the light and passion died in his eyes.  I have never seen a face at once so stern and so gentle as his was when he caught the outreaching hands in his own.

“You forget that they must find one of us, or it’s all no use.  Listen carefully, dear one.  If you truly love me, you must do as I bid you.  Give me my chance of fooling fate; of making my death worth while.  It won’t be hard.”  He took the little box from his pocket.  “It will be very easy.”

“Give it to me, too,” she pleaded like a child.  “Ah, Ned, we can’t part now!  Both of us together.”

He shook his head, smiling.  The man’s face was as beautiful as a god’s at that moment or an angel’s.  “You must go back to your sister,” he said simply.  “You haven’t the right to die.”

He turned to the table, drew a sheet of paper to him and wrote four words.  You all know what they were; his confession.  Then his hand went up, a swift movement, and a moment later he was setting back the glass of water upon the desk whence he had taken it.

“Love and glory of my life, will you go?” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Not until then did the paralysis, which had gripped me when I saw Ned turn the pellets into his hand, relax.  I ran forward.  The girl cried out.  Ned met me with his hand against my breast.

“How much have you heard?” he said quickly.

“Enough.”

“Then you’ll understand.”  His faith was more irresistible than a thousand arguments.  “Take her home, Chris.”

I held out my hand.  “Come,” I said.

She turned and faced him.  “Must I?  Alone?” What a depth of desolation in that word!

“There is no other way, dearest one.”

“Good-bye, then, until we meet,” she said in the passionate music of her voice.  “Every beat of my heart will bring me nearer to you.  There will be no other life for me.  Soon or late I’ll come to you.  You believe it.  Say you believe it!”

“I believe it.”  He bent and kissed her lips.  Then his form slackened away from the arms that clasped it, and sank into the chair.  A policeman’s whistle shrilled outside the window.  The faintest flicker of a smile passed over the face of the sleeper.

I took her away, still with that unearthly ecstasy on her face.

* * * * *

The glow of the narrator’s cigar waxed, a pin-point of light in a world of dimness and mystery.  Subdued breathing made our silence rhythmic.  When I found my voice, it was hardly more than a whisper.

“Good God!  What a tragedy!”

“Tragedy?  You think it so?” The Little Red Doctor’s gnarled face gleamed strangely behind the tiny radiance.  “Dominie, you have a queer notion of this life and little faith in the next.”

“‘She met death as a tryst,’” murmured the old librarian.  “And he!  ‘Trailing clouds of glory!’ The triumph of that victory over fate!  One would like to have seen the meeting between them, after the waiting.”