lty, and dragging at his shirt front. Roma
opened it at the neck, and something dropped on to the floor. It was a
lock of glossy black hair tied with a red ribbon such as lawyers used to
bind documents together. Dull as his sight was, he saw it.

"Yours, Roma! You were ill with fever when you first came to Rome, you
remember. The doctors cut off your beautiful hair. This was some of it.
I've worn it ever since. Silly, wasn't it?"

Tears began to shine in Roma's eyes. The cynical man who laughed at
sentiment had carried the tenderest badge of it in his breast.

"I used to wear some of my mother's in the same place when I was
younger. She was a good woman, too. When she put me to bed she used to
repeat something: 'Hold Thou my hands,' I think.... May I hold your
hands, Roma?"

Roma turned away her head, but she held out her hand, and the dying man
kissed it.

"What a beautiful hand it is! I think I should know it among all the
hands in the world. How stupid! People have been afraid of me all my
life, Roma; even my mother was afraid of me when I was a child; but to
die without once having known what it was to have some one to love
you.... I believe I'm beginning to rave."

The mournful irony of the words was belied by the tremulous voice.

"My little comedy is played out, I suppose, and when the curtain is down
it is time to go home. Death is a solemn sort of homegoing, Roma, and if
those we've injured cannot forgive us before we go...."

But the battle of hate in Roma's heart was over. She had remembered
Rossi and that had swept away all her bitterness. As the Baron stood to
her, so she stood to her husband. They were two unforgiven ones, both
guilty and ashamed.

"Indeed, indeed I do forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven," she said,
whereupon he laughed again, but with a different note altogether.

Then he asked her to lift up his head. She placed a cushion under it,
but still he called on her to lift his head higher.

"Can you lift me in your arms, Roma?... Higher still. So!... Can you
hold me there?"

"How do you feel now?" she asked.

"It won't be long," he answered. His respirations came in whiffs.

Roma began to repeat as much as she could remember of the prayers for
the dying which she had heard at the deathbed of her aunt. The dying man
smiled an indulgent smile into the young woman's beautiful and mournful
face and allowed her to go on. As she prayed faster and faster, saying
the same words over