“I will go,” I whispered, my lips scarcely moving to pronounce the words, so stiff and cold they felt.

“Stay one moment,” he said, pityingly.  “You have been taught to judge of your duty for yourself, not to leave it to a priest.  I ought to let you judge now.  Your husband is dying, but he is conscious, and is asking to see you.  He does not believe us that death is near; he says none but you will tell him the truth.  You cannot go to him without running a great risk.  Your danger will be greater than ours, who have been with him all the time.  You see, madame, he does not understand me, and he refuses to believe in Tardif.  Yet you cannot save him; you can only receive his last adieu.  Think well, my child.  Your life may be the forfeit.”

“I must go,” I answered, more firmly; “I will go.  He is my husband.”

“Good!” he said, “you have chosen the better part.  Come, then.  The good God will protect you.”

He drew my hand through his arm, and led me to the low doorway.  The inner room was very dark with the overhanging eaves, and my eyes, dilated by the strong sunlight, could discern but little in the gloom.  Tardif was kneeling beside a low bed, bathing my husband’s forehead.  He made way for me, and I felt him touch my hand with his lips as I took his place.  But no one spoke.  Richard’s face, sunken, haggard, dying, with filmy eyes, dawned gradually out of the dim twilight, line after line, until it lay sharp and distinct under my gaze.  I could not turn away from it for an instant, even to glance at Tardif or Monsieur Laurentie.  The poor, miserable face! the restless, dreary, dying eyes!

“Where is Olivia?” he muttered, in a hoarse and labored voice.

“I am here, Richard,” I answered, falling on my knees where Tardif had been kneeling, and putting my hand on his; “look at me.  I am Olivia.”

“You are mine, you know,” he said, his fingers closing round my wrist with a grasp as weak as a very young child’s.—­“She is my wife, Monsieur le Cure.”

“Yes,” I sobbed, “I am your wife, Richard.”

“Do they hear it?” he asked, in a whisper.

“We hear it,” answered Tardif.

A strange, spasmodic smile flitted across his ghastly face, a look of triumph and success.  His fingers tightened over my hand, and I left it passively in their clasp.

“Mine!” he murmured.

“Olivia,” he said, after a long pause, and in a stronger voice, “you always spoke the truth to me.  This priest and his follower have been trying to frighten me into repentance, as if I were an old woman.  They say I am near dying.  Tell me, is it true?”

The last words he had spoken painfully, dragging them one after another, as if the very utterance of them was hateful to him.  He looked at me with his cold, glittering eyes, which seemed almost mocking at me, even then.

“Richard,” I said, “it is true.”

“Good God!” he cried.