It was like an electric shock galvanizing the seeming ghost into life. The girl started and made a step forward. She came nearer and nearer until she was leaning toward him, and her sweet, warm breath floating over his cheek. This was no ghost, but a living, breathing, sentient woman! “Oh, Mr. Delaney,” she cried, with something like awe in her voice, “is it possible that you take me for a ghost?” He could not speak for joy. His brain reeled deliriously. Could it be Aline Rodney in the flesh? Aline Rodney, come back to him before he died, looking at him kindly, speaking to him gently? Should he not awaken presently and find it all a delusive dream? He put out his wasted hand and touched her warm, white wrist. “Let me touch you, for I cannot believe my eyes,” he said, wistfully. “Is it really you, Aline, or only the blessedest dream that ever dazed a man’s senses?” She did not repulse him. She let him hold her hand in his a moment that he might assure himself of the reality of this vision. “Yes, it is really I,” she said, reassuringly, and then she added, curiously, “Why did you take me for a ghost? Did any one tell you I was dead?” “No, no, it was only my fancy. I was dazed when I opened my eyes and saw you there. I had not heard a sound except the cinders falling from the grate. What could I think but that you were a ghostly visitant from another world?” She stood gazing down at him, seeming to forget that her hand still lay lightly in the clasp of his. “They told me to come in softly,” she said. “They thought that you might be asleep. So I turned the knob softly and came in. But when I saw that your eyes were closed I was just going away quietly again when you awakened.” “It was very good of you to come,” he said, softly pressing the warm, white hand that lay passive in his. “I did not deserve it. I thought that you would hate and scorn me too bitterly ever to speak to me again. Thank you a thousand times for coming.” Something came into the wistful face into which he was anxiously gazing--kindness, pity, almost sadness. “Yes, I have been very angry with you,” she said, with a curious catch in her breath. “I meant that you should never, never see my face again. But they told me that you were--were ill, and then I came. You know we forgive all things to the dying.” CHAPTER LXIV. He had felt that he was slowly dying; he knew that the physician and all the others thought so, too. He had not cared for it. He had rather exulted in the thought, for he had grown weary of his ruined life. But when Aline Rodney in those few frank words told him that he was dying, it touched a chord in his heart that thrilled with the keenest pain. There came to him a pang that was like despair at the thought of leaving the world with her in it.