inful throbbing of my heart was plainly
audible; then Harry murmured, in a voice of the utmost tenderness:
"Desiree!" And again, "Desiree! Desiree!" until I half expected the
very strength and sweetness of his emotion to bring our comrade back to
life.

Suddenly, with a quick, impulsive movement, he raised his head to
glance at me.

"She loved you," he said; and though there was neither jealousy nor
anger in his voice, somehow I could not meet his gaze.

"She loved you," he repeated in a tone half of wonder. "And you--you--"

I answered his eyes.

"She was yours," I said, with a touch of bitterness that persuaded him
of the truth. "All her beauty, all her loveliness, all her charm, to
be buried--Ah! God help us--"

My voice broke, and I knelt on the ground beside Harry and pressed my
lips to the white forehead and golden hair of what had been Le Mire.

Thus we remained for a long time.

It was hard to believe that death had in reality taken possession of
the still form stretched as in repose before us. Her body, still warm,
seemed quivering with the instinct of life; but the eyes were not the
eyes of Desiree. I closed them, and arranged the tangled mass of hair
as well as possible over her shoulders. As I did so the air, set in
motion by my hand, caused some of the golden strands to tremble gently
across her lips; and Harry bent forward with a painful eagerness,
thinking that she had breathed.

"Dearest," he murmured, "dearest, speak to me!"

His hand sought her swelling bosom gropingly; and his eyes, as they
looked pleadingly even into mine, shot into my heart and unnerved me.

I rose to my feet, scarcely able to stand, and moved away.

But the fate that had finally intervened for us--too late, alas! for
one--did not leave us long with our dead. Even now I do not know what
happened; at the time I knew even less. Harry told me afterward that
the first shock came at the instant he had taken Desiree in his arms
and pressed his lips to hers.

I had crossed to the other side of the passage and was gazing back
toward the chasm at the Incas on the other side, when again I felt the
ground, absolutely without warning, tremble violently under my feet.
At the same moment there was a low, curious rumble as of the thundering
of distant cannon.

I sprang toward Harry with a cry of alarm, and had crossed about to the
middle of the passage, when a deafening roar smote my ear, and the
entire wall of the cave