She rose noiselessly and came to his side and looked down into his face. Very long she stood there, motionless as a statue, beautiful as a mourning angel. It was so little that she asked. It was so little compared with all she had hoped, or in comparison with all she had demanded, so little in respect of what she had given. For she had given her soul. And in return she asked only for one small kindly thought when all should be over. She bent down as she stood and touched his cool forehead with her lips. “Sleep on, my beloved,” she said in a voice that murmured softly and sadly. She started a little at what she had done, and drew back, half afraid, like an innocent girl. But as though he had obeyed her words, he seemed to sleep more deeply still. He must be very tired, she thought, to sleep like that, but she was thankful that the soft kiss, the first and last, had not waked him. “Sleep on,” she said again in a whisper scarcely audible to herself. “Forget Unorna, if you cannot think of her mercifully and kindly. Sleep on, you have the right to rest, and I can never rest again. You have forgiven--forget, too, then, unless you can remember better things of me than I have deserved in your memory. Let her take her kingdom back. It was never mine--remember what you will, forget at least the wrong I did, and forgive the wrong you never knew--for you will know it surely some day. Ah, love--I love you so--dream but one dream, and let me think I take her place. She never loved you more than I, she never can. She would not have done what I have done. Dream only that I am Beatrice for this once. Then when you wake you will not think so cruelly of me. Oh, that I might be she--and you your loving self--that I might be she for one day in thought and word, in deed and voice, in face and soul! Dear love--you would never know it, yet I should know that you had had one loving thought for me. You would forget. It would not matter then to you, for you would have only dreamed, and I should have the certainty--for ever, to take with me always!” As though the words carried a meaning with them to his sleeping senses, a look of supreme and almost heavenly happiness stole over his sleeping face. But Unorna could not see it. She had turned suddenly away, burying her face in her hands upon the back of her own chair. “Are there no miracles left in Heaven?” she moaned, half whispering lest she should wake him. “Is there no miracle of deeds undone again and of forgiveness given--for me? God! God! That we should be for ever what we make ourselves!”