I looked across him to where Suzee lay motionless.

“Suzee,” I said, my breath almost dying in my throat.

She stirred slightly.  I was beside her in a moment.  Her eyelids opened slowly.  Then her eyes filled with terror.

“Where is he?” she muttered.

“Dead; he cannot hurt you any more.  You are safe now.”

“No, Treevor, I am dying; it pains me so here.”

She laid one hand on her breast and I saw the blood well up between two fingers.  I tore aside the muslin veils on her bosom and found the wound:  it was not large, just one clean stab, turning purple at the edges.

“It is deep, Treevor; so deep.  And it bleeds inside me.  It is drinking my life.  I have only a few minutes to tell you.  Hold up my head.  I can’t breathe.”

I slipped my arm beneath her little neck.  My heart seemed breaking with distress; black tides of resentment, of rage went through me, that she should be torn from me.

“Listen, Treevor.  It was I that lied to you.  I told you he was dead, and the child.  They were not.  I ran away.  I left them at Sitka.  I came to ’Frisco and took refuge with that woman.  Then I wrote to you.”

A sudden horror of her seemed to enfold me as I heard.

How she had lied and deceived me!  And forced me to break my word!

“Because I wanted you so much and I knew you would never have me if you thought he was still alive....  Your stupid promise.  What are promises when one loves?  I wanted you, Treevor, so much!  So much!”

Some of the old fire flashed out of the dying eyes, a hungry, despairing look.

“Kiss me, Treevor.  Say you forgive me.”

But I could not.  For the moment I was so stunned, so overwhelmed by this sudden revelation of her deception.

A deathly physical faintness was creeping over me; a sensation like the beginning of long-denied sleep which rolls at last like an unconquerable tide, obliterating everything, through the exhausted frame, was invading my whole body.  I clasped one hand mechanically round the bed-rail to support myself, the ground seemed to lift and sway beneath my feet.

I looked down on the little oval face that had lived so near to me through the last year.  How pale it was now, framed in the crimson mist that stretched across the bed!  At the slight, exquisite body so often held in my arms.  Was I to lose them now for all time?

“I did it all for you, because I wanted you so much.  Do kiss me and say you forgive.  I shall not rest through a thousand years if you will not.”

Grey shadows were collecting in her face, some unseen hand seemed drawing the eternal veil between us.  To me, life, with all its doings, was far away.  I myself was standing in the uncertain mists of death.  Wide, limitless, and grey, the great plains of the hereafter seemed opening before me, dim, silent, and mysterious.

Life, with its glare of colour, its triumphant music, its crash of sound, was far behind me, almost forgotten; like clouds of indefinable tint, piled up on some distant horizon, rose the memories of its loves, its woes, its crimes.