He came into the room cautiously and feeling his way by the furniture. The darkness was darkness indeed to him. He could see nothing of her but a rosy glimmer where her skirt caught the direct glow of the flames. He paused by the head of a sofa which had stood against the wall since he was a child, and gripped the smooth, familiar curl of the back. “You were never afraid that I should ask more of you than ‘farewell,’ were you, Mademoiselle?” he said sweetly in his tired, slightly hoarse voice. She fortified herself by memories, by the thought of the old Marquis, of his mother, by her own ideals. She tried to stifle her fatal pity that wished to weep over him, and to summon instead some ghost of last summer’s love to help her. “Luc,” she said, with surprising steadiness, “you must not assume that I am inconstant, ignoble. You need me more than ever.” He interrupted her, very gently. “But you have no need of me.” “Yes--ah, yes. This is a strange greeting for you to give me--Luc.” Her voice rose desperately. “Everything is as it was before.” “No,” he said; “everything is changed. You know it--you knew it when you turned the lamp out.” She was silent. “God knows,” he continued slowly, “that it would be pleasant to me to believe what you say--to deceive myself, to sweeten my great loneliness by your loyal duty, by your tender service--by all the gracious phantoms you would conjure from the grave of your dead love--but I am not the coward who would take your sweet self-sacrifice.” “You make _me_ a coward!” came her voice, very low. “What am I to say?” “Farewell,” he answered. He heard her move and saw the blur of her pink skirt pass out of the firelight. “No,” she said, “I _will_ be true--I _will_ keep my vows--I have no right----” “Nor I,” he put in quickly. He paused a moment, then said quietly, “I have no career before me. I shall always be my father’s pensioner, and I shall always be an invalid--and, though no one knows it, the doctor warned me that I have only a few years to live.” “Oh!” shuddered Clémence. He cautiously moved a little nearer to her, treading delicately and feeling his way. “There is nothing to grieve over--and nothing to regret,” he said, “save that I ever entangled your life with mine, Mademoiselle. Yet it has given me the very sweetest memories--and afterwards, in the long years ahead of you, when you are honoured and loved as you are worthy of being, it cannot lessen your happiness to remember that you were the fairest, most sacred thing in the life of a man who did not know--much joy.” He paused and coughed. She was sobbing childishly. “Your tears will be repaid you,” he added in a faltering voice. “You weep for a man who worships you, and who blesses God for having known you--and when you think afterwards of how much it meant to me to meet this tenderness I could not take, you will not regret those tears, Clémence.”