The girl herself was past speaking. She lay back against her mother’s breast, her own worn and emaciated shoulders heaving with convulsive struggles for the departing breath. She could not speak, but those eyes, which were so living while she was dying, turned to him with a look of such appeal, such entreaty that he could not bear the sight. They were large with fever and weakness, liquid and clear and dilated, as the eyes of the dying often are, like two stars glowing out in sudden light from the pale night of her face. He cried out, ‘What do you want me to do?’ with despair in his voice, and a sense that whatever they asked of him he could not now refuse. ‘To do her justice,’ said the mother. ‘Oh, Mr. Wentworth, to make up to her for all she’s suffered. To make her an honest woman before she dies.’ The girl’s dying lips moved, but no sound was heard: a pathetic smile came upon her lips, her eyes held him with that prayer, too intense for words. Oliver turned away his head not to see them, then turned back again as if in them there was some spell. A passionate impatience pricked his heart, for their inference was not true. They had not been to each other what was said. Love! love was too great a word to be mentioned here at all. It had been levity, folly; it had not been love. She had been too slight for such a word; but she was not too slight for death. For that solemnity nothing is too slight or too poor; and death is as great as love is, and compels respect. She drew his eyes to her so that he could not free himself. He said in an unnatural, stifled voice, ‘Whatever you want from me--this is not the--the time. There is nothing to be done to-night--and after to-night’--he could not say the words--he waved his hand towards the bed. She was dying now--now--before their eyes. ‘I know what you mean,’ said the mother, with dreadful calm. ‘She won’t last out the night. Very likely she won’t, but that’s what nobody knows except her Maker. If she don’t, you can’t do nothing, and nobody here will say a word. But if she do--! Give her your word, Mr. Wentworth, as you’ll marry her to-morrow if she lives, and she’ll die happy. She’ll die happy; whether it comes to anything or whether it don’t. Mr. Wentworth, sir, do, for the love of God!’ The girl recovered a little gasping breath. ‘I’ll die happy. I’ll die happy, whether it comes to anything or not.’ Even this little rally showed more and more the nearness of the end. He had shrank at the word ‘marry’ as if it had been a blow aimed at him, but he could not escape from the tragic persistence of those eyes. And overwhelmed as he was, a little hope rose in him. He said to himself, ‘She can never live till to-morrow.’ Why should he resist if a promise would make her happy? for she was surely dying, and she never could take him at his word. ‘If that is all, I will promise,’ he said.