Buntingford had the terrible impression that there was a certain triumph in the faint tone.  He said nothing, and presently the whisper began again.

“I keep seeing those people dancing—­and hearing the band.  I dropped a little bag—­did anybody find it?”

“Yes, I have it here.”  He drew it out of his pocket, and put it in her hand, which feebly grasped it.

“Rocca gave it to me at Florence once, I am very fond of it.  I suppose you wonder that—­I loved him?”

There was a strange and tragic contrast between the woman’s weakness, and her bitter provocative spirit; just as there was between the picturesque strength of Buntingford—­a man in his prime—­and the humble, deprecating gentleness of his present voice and manner.

“No,” he answered.  “I am glad—­if it made you happy.”

“Happy!” She opened her eyes again.  “Who’s ever happy?  We were never happy!”

“Yes—­at the beginning,” he said, with a certain firmness.  “Why take that away?”

She made a protesting movement.

“No—­never!  I was always—­afraid.  Afraid you’d get tired of me.  I was only happy—­working—­and when they hung my picture—­in the Salon—­you remember?”

“I remember it well.”

“But I was always jealous—­of you.  You drew better—­than I did.  That made me miserable.”

After a long pause, during which he gave her some of the prepared stimulant Ramsay had left ready, she spoke again, with rather more vigour.

“Do you remember—­that Artists’ Fete—­in the Bois—­when I went as Primavera—­Botticelli’s Primavera?”

“Perfectly.”

“I was as handsome then—­as that girl you were rowing.  And now—­But I don’t want to die!”—­she said with sudden anguish—­“Why should I die?  I was quite well a fortnight ago.  Why does that doctor frighten me so?” She tried to sit more erect, panting for breath.  He did his best to soothe her, to induce her to go back to bed.  But she resisted with all her remaining strength; instead, she drew him down to her.

“Tell me!—­confess to me!”—­she said hoarsely—­“Madame de Chaville was your mistress!”

“Never!  Calm yourself, poor Anna!  I swear to you.  Won’t you believe me?”

She trembled violently.  “If I left you—­for nothing—­”

She closed her eyes, and tears ran down her cheeks.

He bent over her—­“Won’t you rest now—­and let them take you back to bed? 
You mustn’t talk like this any more.  You will kill yourself.”

He left her in Ramsay’s charge, and went first to find Alcott, begging him to pray with her.  Then he wandered out blindly, into the summer evening.  It was clear to him that she had only a few more hours—­or at most—­days to live.  In his overpowering emotion—­a breaking up of the great deeps of thought and feeling—­he found his way into the shelter of one of the beechwoods that girdled the park, and sat there in a kind of moral stupor, till he had somehow mastered himself.  The “old unhappy far-off things” were terribly with him; the failures and faults of his own distant life, far more than those of the dying woman.  The only thought—­the only interest—­which finally gave him fresh strength—­was the recollection of his boy.