e, now so tragically
fallen in the race of life. All her woman's tenderness was awake
and throbbing with a passionate pity for this lover of her youth.
Why, oh why had he done this thing? The horror of it oppressed her
like a crushing, physical weight. Was it for this that she had
persuaded Burke to rescue him from the depths to which he had sunk?
Had she by her rash interference only precipitated his final
doom--she who had suffered so deeply for his sake, who had yearned
so ardently to bring him back?

Burke had been against it from the beginning; Burke knew to his
cost the hopelessness of it all. Ah, would it have been better if
she had listened to him and refrained from attempting the
impossible? Would it not have been preferable to accept failure
rather than court disaster? What had she done? What had she done?

"Sylvia!"

Surely the old Guy was speaking to her! Those pallid lips could
make no sound; the new, strange Guy was dead.

As in a dream, she answered him through the silence, feeling as if
she spoke into the shadows of the Unknown.

"Yes, Guy? Yes? I am here."

"Will you--forgive me," he said, "for making--a boss shot!"

Then she turned to the prostrate form beside her on the floor, and
saw that the light of understanding had come back into those
haunted eyes.

She knelt over him and laid her hand upon his rough hair. "Oh,
Guy, hush--hush!" she said. "Thank God you are still here!"

A very strange expression flitted over his upturned face, a look
that was indescribably boyish and yet so sad that she caught her
breath to still the intolerable pain at her heart.

"I shan't be--long." he said. "Thank God for that--too! I've
been--working myself up to it--all day."

"Guy!" she said.

He made a slight movement of one hand, and she gathered it close
into her own. It seemed to her that the Shadow of Death had drawn
very near to them, enveloping them both.

"It had--to be," he said, in the husky halting voice so unfamiliar
to her. "It--was a mistake--to try to bring me back.
I'm--beyond--redemption. Ask Burke;--he knows!"

"You are not--you are not!" she told him vehemently. "Guy!" She
was holding his hand hard pressed against her heart; her words came
with a rush of pitying tenderness that swept over every barrier.
"Guy! I want you! You must stay. If you go now--you--you will
break my heart."

His eyes kindled a little at her words, but in a moment the emotion
passed. "