“I’m living here—­”

“Living here?  You?”

“Yes.  Why not?  Soon”—­indifferently—­“I shall be dying here.  It is, at least, as good a place to die in as any other.”

“Dying?” The man’s pleasant baritone voice suddenly shook.  “Dying?  Oh, no, no!  You’ve been ill—­I can see that—­but with care and good nursing—­”

“Don’t deceive yourself, my friend,” she interrupted him remorselessly.  “See, come to the window.  Now look at me—­and then don’t talk any more twaddle about care and good nursing!”

She had drawn him towards the window, till they were standing together in the full blaze of the setting sun.  Then she turned and faced him—­a gaunt wreck of splendid womanhood, her fingers working nervously, whilst her too brilliant eyes, burning in their grey, sunken, sockets, searched his face curiously.

“You’ve worn better than I have,” she observed at last, breaking the silence with a short laugh, “you must be—­let me see—­fifty.  While I’m barely thirty-one—­and I look forty—­and the rest.”

Suddenly he reached out and gathered her thin, restless hands into his, holding them in a kind, firm clasp.

“Oh, my dear!” he said sadly.  “Is there nothing I can do?”

“Yes,” she answered steadily.  “There is.  And it’s to ask you if you will do it that I sent for you.  Do you suppose”—­she swallowed, battling with the tremor in her voice—­“that I wanted you to see me—­as I am now?  It was months—­months before I could bring myself to send you the little pearl ring.”

He stooped and kissed one of the hands he held.

“Dear, foolish woman!  You would always be—­just Pauline—­to me.”

Her eyes softened suddenly.

“So you never married, after all?”

He straightened his shoulders, meeting her glance squarely—­almost sternly.

“Did you imagine that I should?” he asked quietly.

“No, no, I suppose not.”  She looked away.  “What a mess I made of things, didn’t I?  However, it’s all past now; the game’s nearly over, thank Heaven!  Life, since that day”—­the eyes of the man and woman met again in swift understanding—­“has been one long hell.”

“He—­the man you married—­”

“Made that hell.  I left him after six years of it, taking the child with me.”

“The child?” A curious expression came into his eyes, resentful, yet tinged at the same time with an oddly tender interest.  “Was there a child?”

“Yes—­I have a little daughter.”

“And did your husband never trace you?” he asked, after a pause.

“He never tried to”—­grimly.  “Afterwards—­well, it was downhill all the way.  I didn’t know how to work, and by that time I had learned my health was going.  Since then, I’ve lived on the proceeds of the pawnshop—­I had my jewels, you know—­and on the odd bits of money I could scrape together by taking in sewing.”

A groan burst from the man’s dry lips.