Agonized thoughts kept him grim company while he stood listening to her ravings for water to cool her poor parched tongue and lips. Soon she would be dead, and her harrowing sufferings all over. Then he would be alone with the dead girl until death mercifully came to his release. Here they would lie, uncoffined and unburied for years, moldering into dust, their cruel fate forever hidden from men. In his far-off home his sisters would grieve for him awhile, then he would be forgotten. The tiny flame of another match flared into the air at six o'clock. Her ravings had ceased, the hot flush had left her face, the little palms were cool again. She lay with wide-open eyes upon the pillow, breathing faintly--so faintly that he looked for every breath to be her last. In the anguish of that thought, a wild temptation came to him. Somewhere he had read that debilitated invalids were strengthened and restored to health by drinking the fresh, warm blood of newly slaughtered beeves. He tore open the blade of his knife and desperately punctured a vein in his arm. The hot, red blood spurted like a fountain, and he caught it in the wine-glass until it was full. A handkerchief bound tightly about his arm stopped the bleeding of the wound, and, with some difficulty in the darkness, and shuddering with weakness and emotion, he lifted Marie's head on his arm and pressed the glass to her lips. CHAPTER XXII. He scarcely dared hope that she would have enough strength to swallow his strange medicine, but, to his joy, the dry lips parted and clung to the glass until every drop of the liquid had been drained, then, with a long sigh of relief, her head fell back, and he laid it gently on the pillow. "Have I revived her, or--killed her?" he muttered, in a fright. Another match. If it had been the last one, he must have one glimpse of her face now. It lay pale, with shut eyes, and apparently lifeless, on the white pillow. He felt her pulse hurriedly. A feeble, thread-like pulsation assured him that life still lingered. He sat down sorrowfully in a chair by the bed, holding the pulse beneath his finger, waiting sadly for the last. Seven o'clock by the light of the last match, and the pulse still throbbed softly, and, he almost dared to hope, more strongly. "What does it mean? Has my experiment indeed given her a few more hours of life?" he wondered, gladly. It seemed so, for the thread-like pulse gradually grew stronger, and bending down his head, he caught a faint but regular breathing. "Marie," he said, softly, and a quickened breath that was almost a gasp assured him that she heard. "I am here by your side," he went on. "It is dark, and I have used all the matches, so I can not watch your face to see if you are better. Can you speak to me, dear?" "Monsieur," she uttered, faintly, and his heart leaped with joy at the sound. "You are better," he exclaimed, and she murmured a faint: "Yes."