Suddenly, while she was speaking of some indifferent thing, his eyelids closed and twitched, and his hand went out towards hers, almost spasmodically.  She caught it and held it, bending far forward, and again her heart stood still till she missed its beating.

“What is it?” she asked, staring into his face, and already half wild with fear.

He could shake his head feebly, but for a moment he could not speak.  With one of her hands she still held his, and with the other she pressed his brow.  He smiled, as in a spasm, and then his face was a little distorted.  She felt his life slipping from her, under her very touch, as though it were her fault because she would not hold it and keep it for him.

“Gianluca!” she cried, repeating his name in an agonized tone.  “Gianluca!  You must not die!  I am here—­”

He opened his eyes, and the faint smile came back, but without a spasm this time.

“It was a little pain,” he said.  “I am sorry—­it frightened you.”

“Thank God!” she exclaimed, still bending over him.  “Oh—­I thought you were gone!”

“Your voice—­would bring me back—­Veronica,” he said, with many little efforts, word by word, but with life in his face.

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.

“Do you wish it very much?” she asked simply.

Half paralyzed though he was, he started, and the light that came suddenly to his face, wavered and sank and rose once more.  She seemed to hear his words again, saying that she could stand between death and him, were death ever so near.