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 CHAPTER XXXIII

THE END

It was with a heavy heart that I mounted my horse and, accompanied by a guide whom the priest found for me, set out that night for the railway station to take the train to Nish. Even the thought that the morrow would see me with Christina could not at first relieve the gloom of my sorrow or take from my eyes the picture of the cold still form of my dead friend, lying in the sombre bare room in the priest's house. I had left him full instructions for sending on the body to Nish, and had given him a sum of money which made him glad with the thought of all the charities he could dispense among the poor of the village.

But youth is youth and love is love, and as the miles passed which brought me nearer to Christina the drear mournfulness of my grief for the dead began to lose its blackness beneath the glamour of my love for the living. It was a sad tale I had to carry her after all, and though in obedience to my comrade's dying wish I could tell her nothing of his love for her, I knew how she would mourn his loss. But love is selfish; and when at length I reached Nish my heart was beating fast with the throbbing of the delicious, delirious knowledge that we were close together again, with no obstacle to bar the mutual avowal of our passion, and no need to dread another parting.

It was far too late when I arrived for me to seek her