have done, to be my
wife and to love me. But she is not my wife, and what I say is true, and
right as well, your right and hers.

"No--not that--not hers." Taquisara turned half round, against the
table, where he stood, and his voice was low and broken.

"Yes, hers. You will know it soon--when I have taken my love to my
grave, and left her yours on earth."

"Gianluca!"

Taquisara could not speak, beyond that, but he laid his hand upon his
friend's arm and clutched it, as though to hold him back. His dark eyes
darkened, and in them were the terrible tears that strong men shed once
in life, and sometimes once again, but very seldom more.

Gianluca's thin fingers folded upon the hand that held him.

"You have been very true to me," he said. "She will be quite safe with
you."

For a long time they were both silent. It began to rain, and the big
drops beat against the windows, melancholy as the muffled drum of a
funeral march, and the grey morning light grew still more dim.

"I will not go into the other room just yet," said Gianluca, quietly. "I
would rather be alone for a little while."

Their eyes met once more, and Taquisara went away without a word.

That had been almost the last act of the strange tragedy of love and
death which had been lived out in slow scenes during those many weeks.
It was needful that it should come, and inevitable, soon or late. It
began when Gianluca made that one last desperate effort to move, in
sudden certainty of hope that ended in the instant foreknowledge of what
was to be. A little thing swayed him then--such a little thing as the
accident of a sharp foil, a rent in a jacket, the woman's blinding fear
for the man she loved. There are many arrows in fate's quiver, and the
little ones are as keen as the long shafts, and quicker to find the
tender mark.

The man was born to suffer, but he had in him that something divine by
which martyrs made death the witness of life and turned despair of earth
to sure hope of heaven.

He had ever been a man tender and gentle. His nature did not fail him
now. With exquisite devotion and thought for Veronica's happiness, and
with a love for her that penetrated the short future of near death, he
would not say to her what he had said to Taquisara. He would not let one
breath of doubt disturb her only satisfaction while he still lived, nor
trouble her with the least fear lest she had not done all her fullest to
give him happiness while she could.