She had the strength to carry her own letter to her room, to call Aileen’s maid and send her with the other packet to Lady Blanche.  Then she locked herself in....

Oh, the poor, crumpled page, and the labored hand-writing!

“Julie, I am dying.  They are such good fellows, but they can’t save me.  It’s horrible.

“I saw the news of your engagement in a paper the day before I left Denga.  You’re right.  He’ll make you happy.  Tell him I said so.  Oh, my God, I shall never trouble you again!  I bless you for the letter you wrote me.  Here it is....  No, I can’t—­can’t read it.  Drowsy.  No pain—­”

And here the pen had dropped from his hand.  Searching for something more, she drew from the envelope the wild and passionate letter she had written him at Heribert Street, in the early morning after her return from Paris, while she was waiting for Delafield to bring her the news of Lord Lackington’s state.

* * * * *

The small table d’hote of the Hotel Michel was still further diminished that night.  Lady Blanche was with her daughter, and Mrs. Delafield did not appear.

But the moon was hanging in glory over the lake when Julie, unable to bear her room and her thoughts any longer, threw a lace scarf about her head and neck, and went blindly climbing through the upward paths leading to Les Avants.  The roads were silver in the moonlight; so was the lake, save where the great mountain shadows lay across the eastern end.  And suddenly, white, through pine-trees, “Jaman, delicately tall!”

The air cooled her brow, and from the deep, enveloping night her torn heart drew balm, and a first soothing of the pulse of pain.  Every now and then, as she sat down to rest, a waking dream overshadowed her.  She seemed to be supporting Warkworth in her arms; his dying head lay upon her breast, and she murmured courage and love into his ear.  But not as Julie Le Breton.  Through all the anguish of what was almost an illusion of the senses, she still felt herself Delafield’s wife.  And in that flood of silent speech she poured out on Warkworth, it was as though she offered him also Jacob’s compassion, Jacob’s homage, mingled with her own.

Once she found herself sitting at the edge of a meadow, environed by the heavy scents of flowers.  Some apple-trees with whitened trunks rose between her and the lake a thousand feet below.  The walls of Chillon, the houses of Montreux, caught the light; opposite, the deep forests of Bouveret and St. Gingolphe lay black upon the lake; above them rode the moon.  And to the east the high Alps, their pure lines a little effaced and withdrawn, as when a light veil hangs over a sanctuary.