“Don’t; you’ll make me hate him,” groaned Everett.

Katherine laughed and began to play nervously with her fan.  “It wasn’t in the slightest degree his fault; that is the most grotesque part of it.  Why, it had really begun before I ever met him.  I fought my way to him, and I drank my doom greedily enough.”

Everett rose and stood hesitating.  “I think I must go.  You ought to be quiet, and I don’t think I can hear any more just now.”

She put out her hand and took his playfully.

“You’ve put in three weeks at this sort of thing, haven’t you?  Well, it ought to square accounts for a much worse life than yours will ever be.”

He knelt beside her, saying, brokenly:  “I stayed because I wanted to be with you, that’s all.  I have never cared about other women since I knew you in New York when I was a lad.  You are a part of my destiny, and I could not leave you if I would.”

She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head.  “No, no; don’t tell me that.  I have seen enough tragedy.  It was only a boy’s fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment.  One does not love the dying, dear friend.  Now go, and you will come again tomorrow, as long as there are tomorrows.”  She took his hand with a smile that was both courage and despair, and full of infinite loyalty and tenderness, as she said softly: 

"For ever and for ever, farewell, Cassius; If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then, this parting was well made."

The courage in her eyes was like the clear light of a star to him as he went out.

On the night of Adriance Hilgarde’s opening concert in Paris, Everett sat by the bed in the ranch-house in Wyoming, watching over the last battle that we have with the flesh before we are done with it and free of it for ever.  At times it seemed that the serene soul of her must have left already and found some refuge from the storm, and only the tenacious animal life were left to do battle with death.  She laboured under a delusion at once pitiful and merciful, thinking that she was in the Pullman on her way to New York, going back to her life and her work.  When she roused from her stupor, it was only to ask the porter to waken her half an hour out of Jersey City, or to remonstrate about the delays and the roughness of the road.  At midnight Everett and the nurse were left alone with her.  Poor Charley Gaylord had lain down on a couch outside the door.  Everett sat looking at the sputtering night-lamp until it made his eyes ache.  His head dropped forward, and he sank into heavy, distressful slumber.  He was dreaming of Adriance’s concert in Paris, and of Adriance, the troubadour.  He heard the applause and he saw the flowers going up over the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano, and the petals fell and scattered, making crimson splotches on the floor.  Down this crimson pathway came Adriance with his youthful step, leading his singer by the hand; a dark woman this time, with Spanish eyes.