“I don’t know for sure,” Robin replied, while for an instant a deep flush stained his pale cheeks:  “I don’t know for sure.  Sometimes out of those dim shadows of the past which I have struggled so hard to retain, there comes a vision of a little girl—­or, rather, there is a picture which comes before my mind more distinct than the grass, and the trees, and the flowers, though I always try to put it away; but it repeats itself over and over again, and I see it in my dreams so vividly, and especially of late, when life is slipping from me.”

“What is the picture?” Lucy said, and her face was whiter than the one above her.

“It is this,” Robin replied.  “I seem to see myself looking up, with outstretched arms, toward a little girl who is standing above me, looking down at me with a face which cannot—­cannot be the one I shall welcome to heaven and know as my sister’s; for this in the picture has a cruel expression on it, and there is hatred in the eyes, which are so large and black, and stare so fixedly at me.  Then there is a crash, and darkness, and a horrible pain, and loud cries, and the eyes fade away in the blackness, and I know no more till you are sobbing over me and begging me to say that I can see you.  I remember that, I am sure, or else it has been told me so often that it seems as if I did; but the other, the face above me, is all a fancy and a delusion of the brain.  You never looked at me that way—­never could.”

Here he paused, and the girl beside him withdrew herself from him, and clasping her hands tightly together, knelt abjectly at his feet as she said: 

“Oh, Robbie, Robbie! my darling, if you could know with what shame, and anguish, and remorse I am kneeling before you, you would pity and perhaps forgive me when I have told you what I must tell you now.  But don’t touch me—­don’t put your hands upon me, for that would quite unnerve me,” she continued, as she saw the thin hands groping to find her.  “Sit quite still and listen, and then, if you do not loathe me with a loathing unutterable, call me sister once more, and that will be enough.”

The old cathedral clock was striking twelve when that interview ended, and when it struck the hour of midnight again Robin Grey lay dead in the room which looked toward the sea, and the soft south wind, sweet with the perfume of roses and orange blossoms, kissed his white face and stirred the thick curls of golden hair clustering about his brow.  As is often the case with consumptives, his death had been sudden at the last, so sudden that Lucy scarcely realized that he was dying, until she held him dead upon her bosom.  But so long as life lasted he kept repeating her name in accents of unutterable tenderness and love.

“Lucy, Lucy, my precious sister, God bless you for all you have been to me, and comfort you when I am gone, darling, darling Lucy, I love you so much; Lucy, Lucy, Lucy where are you?  You must not leave me.  Give me your hand till I reach the river-bank where the angels are waiting for me, I can see them and the beautiful city over the dark river, though I can’t see you; but I shall in heaven, and I am almost there.  Good-by, good-by, Lucy.”