while. It
won't be hard." He took the little box from his pocket. "It will be
very easy."

"Give it to me, too," she pleaded like a child. "Ah, Ned, we can't part
now! Both of us together."

He shook his head, smiling. The man's face was as beautiful as a god's
at that moment or an angel's. "You must go back to your sister," he said
simply. "You haven't the right to die."

He turned to the table, drew a sheet of paper to him and wrote four
words. You all know what they were; his confession. Then his hand went
up, a swift movement, and a moment later he was setting back the glass
of water upon the desk whence he had taken it.

"Love and glory of my life, will you go?" he said.

"Yes," she whispered.

Not until then did the paralysis, which had gripped me when I saw Ned
turn the pellets into his hand, relax. I ran forward. The girl cried
out. Ned met me with his hand against my breast.

"How much have you heard?" he said quickly.

"Enough."

"Then you'll understand." His faith was more irresistible than a
thousand arguments. "Take her home, Chris."

I held out my hand. "Come," I said.

She turned and faced him. "Must I? Alone?" What a depth of desolation in
that word!

"There is no other way, dearest one."

"Good-bye, then, until we meet," she said in the passionate music of her
voice. "Every beat of my heart will bring me nearer to you. There will
be no other life for me. Soon or late I'll come to you. You believe it.
Say you believe it!"

"I believe it." He bent and kissed her lips. Then his form slackened
away from the arms that clasped it, and sank into the chair. A
policeman's whistle shrilled outside the window. The faintest flicker of
a smile passed over the face of the sleeper.

I took her away, still with that unearthly ecstasy on her face.

* * * * *

The glow of the narrator's cigar waxed, a pin-point of light in a world
of dimness and mystery. Subdued breathing made our silence rhythmic.
When I found my voice, it was hardly more than a whisper.

"Good God! What a tragedy!"

"Tragedy? You think it so?" The Little Red Doctor's gnarled face gleamed
strangely behind the tiny radiance. "Dominie, you have a queer notion of
this life and little faith in the next."

"'She met death as a tryst,'" murmured the old librarian. "And he!
'Trailing clouds of glory!' The triumph of that victory over fate! One
would like to have seen the meeting between them, after the