All memory of the bitterness and the cruel disappointment that he had brought into her life had rolled away from her during those still hours of watching.  She did not think of herself at all; only of Guy, once so eager and full of sparkling hope, now so tragically fallen in the race of life.  All her woman’s tenderness was awake and throbbing with a passionate pity for this lover of her youth.  Why, oh why had he done this thing?  The horror of it oppressed her like a crushing, physical weight.  Was it for this that she had persuaded Burke to rescue him from the depths to which he had sunk?  Had she by her rash interference only precipitated his final doom—­she who had suffered so deeply for his sake, who had yearned so ardently to bring him back?

Burke had been against it from the beginning; Burke knew to his cost the hopelessness of it all.  Ah, would it have been better if she had listened to him and refrained from attempting the impossible?  Would it not have been preferable to accept failure rather than court disaster?  What had she done?  What had she done?

“Sylvia!”

Surely the old Guy was speaking to her!  Those pallid lips could make no sound; the new, strange Guy was dead.

As in a dream, she answered him through the silence, feeling as if she spoke into the shadows of the Unknown.

“Yes, Guy?  Yes?  I am here.”

“Will you—­forgive me,” he said, “for making—­a boss shot!”

Then she turned to the prostrate form beside her on the floor, and saw that the light of understanding had come back into those haunted eyes.

She knelt over him and laid her hand upon his rough hair.  “Oh,
Guy, hush—­hush!” she said.  “Thank God you are still here!”

A very strange expression flitted over his upturned face, a look that was indescribably boyish and yet so sad that she caught her breath to still the intolerable pain at her heart.

“I shan’t be—­long.” he said.  “Thank God for that—­too!  I’ve been—­working myself up to it—­all day.”

“Guy!” she said.

He made a slight movement of one hand, and she gathered it close into her own.  It seemed to her that the Shadow of Death had drawn very near to them, enveloping them both.

“It had—­to be,” he said, in the husky halting voice so unfamiliar to her.  “It—­was a mistake—­to try to bring me back.  I’m—­beyond—­redemption.  Ask Burke;—­he knows!”

“You are not—­you are not!” she told him vehemently.  “Guy!” She was holding his hand hard pressed against her heart; her words came with a rush of pitying tenderness that swept over every barrier.  “Guy!  I want you!  You must stay.  If you go now—­you—­you will break my heart.”

His eyes kindled a little at her words, but in a moment the emotion passed.  “It’s too late, my dear;—­too late,” he said and turned his head on the pillow under it as if seeking rest.  “You don’t—­understand.  Just as well for me perhaps.  But I’m better gone—­for your sake, better gone.”