Then she suddenly stopped, checked and startled by his face.  He was always colourless and thin, but the two nights he had just passed through had given him an expression of haggard exhaustion.  His black eyes seemed to have lost the keenness which was so remarkable in them, and his prematurely gray hair gave him almost a look of age in spite of the lightness and pliancy of the figure.

He came forward, and took her hand nervously and closely in his own.

‘I have come to bring you sad news,’ he said gently, and seeking anxiously word by word how he might soften what, after all, could not be softened.  ’M. de Chateauvieux sent me to you at once, that you should not hear in any other way.  But it must be a shock to you—­for you loved her!’

‘Oh!’ she cried, interrupting him, speaking in short, gasping words, and answering not so much his words as his look.  ’She is ill—­she is in danger—­something has happened?’

‘I was summoned on Wednesday,’ said Kendal, helpless after all in the grip of the truth which would not be managed or controlled.  ’When I got there she had been two days ill, and there was no hope.’

He paused; her eyes of agonised questioning implored him to go on.  ’I was with her six hours—­after I came she had no pain—­it was quite peaceful, and—­she died in the evening.’

She had been watching him open-eyed, every vestige of colour fading from cheek and lip; when he stopped, she gave a little cry.  He let go her hand, and she sank into a chair near, so white and breathless that he was alarmed.

‘Shall I get you water—­shall I ring?’ he asked after a moment or two, bending over her.

‘No,’ she whispered with difficulty; ‘let me alone—­just for a minute.’

He left her side, and stood leaning against the mantelpiece, waiting anxiously.  She struggled against the physical oppression which had seized upon her, and fought it down bravely.  But he noticed with a pang now that the flush was gone, that she looked fragile and worn, and, as his thought went back for a moment to the Surrey Sunday and her young rounded beauty among the spring green, he could have cried out in useless rebellion against the unyielding physical conditions which press upon and imprison the flame of life.

At last the faintness passed off, and she sat up, her hands clasped round her knees, and the tears running fast over her cheeks.  Her grief was like herself—­frank, simple, expressive.

’Will you tell me more about it?  Oh, I cannot believe it!  Why, only last week when I was ill she talked of coming to me!  I have just been writing to her—­there is my letter.  I feel as if I could not bear it; she was like a mother to me in Paris.  Oh, if I could have seen her!’

‘You were one of her chief thoughts at the last,’ said Kendal, much moved.  And he went on to tell her the story of Marie’s dying hours, describing that gentle withdrawal from life with a manly tenderness of feeling and a quick memory for all that could soften the impression of it to the listener.  And then he brought out the miniature and gave it to her, and she accepted it with a fresh burst of sorrow, putting it to her lips, studying it and weeping over it, with an absolute spontaneity and self-abandonment which was lovely because it was so true.