The man was born to suffer, but he had in him that something divine by which martyrs made death the witness of life and turned despair of earth to sure hope of heaven.

He had ever been a man tender and gentle.  His nature did not fail him now.  With exquisite devotion and thought for Veronica’s happiness, and with a love for her that penetrated the short future of near death, he would not say to her what he had said to Taquisara.  He would not let one breath of doubt disturb her only satisfaction while he still lived, nor trouble her with the least fear lest she had not done all her fullest to give him happiness while she could.  In the end, it was his love that cut short his living, and no one knew what hours and days and nights of pain he bore, till the end came.  He made of his love and his death a way for her life.  She had given him all she had.  He gave it back to her a hundred-fold, but she should not know, while he lived, that her great gift had not been to him more than she could make it, all that she wished it might be, all that she knew it was not.

He had not far to carry his burden; but except his friend, no one should know the heaviness of his heart, neither his father nor his mother, and least of all, Veronica.  He could not hide that he was dying, but he could hide the cost of it, and its bitterness.  After that day, his life went from him, as the strength falls away from a ship’s sails when the breeze is softly dying on a summer’s evening.  In fear Veronica watched him, and in fear she met Taquisara’s eyes.  In the long nights, when it rained and there was no moon, the darkness of death’s wings was in the air, and she held her breath, alone in her dim room.

They all knew it, and none said it, though shadow answered shadow in one another’s faces when they met.  It was as though another element than air had descended amongst them, dull, unresonant, hushing word and tread.

For each life we love is a sun, in our lives that would be dark if there were no love in them, and when it goes down to its setting in our hearts, the last light of love’s day is very deep and tender, as no other is after it, and the passionate, sad twilight of regret deepens to a darkness of great loneliness over all, until our tears are wept, and our souls take of our mortal selves memories of love undying.

The end came soon, in the night, for it was his will to live that had kept him with them so long.  Taquisara was with him.  One by one the others came, hastily muffled and wrapped in dark robes, for the night was cold and damp even within doors.  One after another they came, and they stood and knelt beside him on the right and left.  He spoke to them all,—­to his father and his mother first, for he felt the tide ebbing.  With streaming eyes Veronica bent down and looked for the fading light in his, through her fast-falling tears.  And close to her his mother stretched out weak hands that trembled with every breaking sob.  His father knelt there,