I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with spasmodic effort to control emotion. When the eyes were opened and fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or even of wounded pride. They were full of tears, ready to gush in one last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking heart. It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end. I knew of his intention to leave the next day: there was little time left me to aid him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman's mysterious nature or strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration. That he might be victorious she must be vanquished. _She_ was, then, my antagonist. The deepening twilight was producing chilliness. I flooded the room with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and invited him to a seat near the fire. "You will not leave me, will you? This may be--_it will be_--my last demand on you as a confidante. How is the bouquet progressing?" he asked. "See," I said, holding my embroidery up before me: "we must hurry. I have but one more tendril to add." "Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?" he said pensively. But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated as much to him. "Yes," I replied, "but hope must now give place to effort. I see you are not going to take my 'give-her-up' advice." "No--only from her who has the right to give it." I now considered my patient out of danger. "Then why do you torture yourself longer with doubts? Perhaps your irresolution has caused a want of confidence in the strength of your affection. At least give her an opportunity to define her true position toward you. Beard the lions of indifference and friendship in their dens, and do not yield to unmanly cowardice. Strange that I have given you the counsel last which should have been given first! But do not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her. Assure her of your long and unwavering devotion. Constancy is the most valued word in a true woman's vocabulary. You have staked too much happiness to lose: you _must_ win." "And if I lose," he said--holding up something before him which I took to be a picture, though it was in the shape of a heart--"and if I lose, then perish all of earth to me. But leave me only this, and should I hold you thus, and gaze on what I have first and last and only loved until this perishable material on which I have placed you turn to dust, still will you be graven on a heart whose deathless love can know no death; for a thing so holy as the love I bear you was not made to die." My work--now my completed work--dropped beneath my fingers, for the last stitch was taken.