At last he turned his face very wearily and slowly on the brown silk cushion, and looked at her bent head.  Instinctively she raised her hot eyes.

“Forgive you?” He spoke very sorrowfully.  “I love you.  What is there to forgive?  It is not your fault—­”

“It is—­it is!” she cried, speaking into his sad eyes for forgiveness, with all her soul.

“I shall die—­but it is not your fault,” he answered, and he sank back, for he had raised himself a little.  “It is not your fault,” he repeated.  “Do not ask me to forgive you.  Perhaps I should have lived longer—­I do not know, for I only lived for you.  No—­I am quiet now.  I can speak better than I could.  You must not think that you have killed me, if I die.  Men live through worse, but not men like me, perhaps.  Something else is killing me slowly, but they will not tell me what it is.  Never mind.  It will do as well without a name, and if I get well, it needs none.  After all, I am not dead yet, and while I am alive, I can love you.  You have been all to me.  If you had loved me, I should have had more than all the world, and that would have been too much.  If I deceived myself, loving you as I did,—­as I do,—­it is not your fault, Veronica.  It is not your fault.  There was a time last year, when I would have done anything, given everything, life and all, for one of a thousand words you have written and said to me since then—­when I would have committed crimes for the touch of this little hand.  Do you see?  It is all my fault.  That is what I wanted you to understand.”

He had said all he could, and his breath came with an effort at the last.  But his lips smiled bravely as he looked at her, still kneeling by his side.  Then he seemed to realize that she should not be there.

“Get up, dear,” he said, with failing voice.  “You must not kneel—­some one might come—­they would think—­that you meant—­something.”

His lids quivered and closed, and his lips trembled oddly.  She felt his hand relax, and she thought that he was gone.  Instantly she sprang to her feet beside him, and lifted his head, her face full of the horror that goes before the wave of pain for those one loves.  But he had not even fainted.  He opened his eyes, and smiled, and tried to speak again, but could not.

Veronica’s lips moved, too, as she stood there, supporting him a little with her arm and stiffened with terror for his life.  But she could not speak either.  She watched his face with most intense anxiety.  Again and again, he opened his eyes, and saw her, and he felt her arm under him.

“It is nothing,” he said suddenly.  “I was a little faint.”

She drew away her arm with a deep breath of relief, and he sighed when it was gone.  But neither of them spoke.  Veronica rang, and sent for his favourite wine, and he drank a little of it.  Then she sat down beside him, where she had sat before, and the room was very still.