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Rh turned upon him, as she spoke, a look so moving, so piercing in its wistfulness, that the tears sprang to Tregenna's eyes.

"Kiss me," said she quickly. "Kiss me, once, kiss me twice, and thrice—before I die!"

As she uttered these words, in a hoarse and broken voice, she strove to raise herself, and lifted her white and eager face to his.

He obeyed her, kissing her three times, not with the feeling that it was a dying woman whose lips touched his, but with a horrible, uncanny sense of contact with some being that was not honest flesh and blood. It seemed to him that her dry lips burned, seared his, as if he had been touched by red-hot coals.

It was with difficulty that he repressed a shudder as she let him go. She fixed upon him her dark gray eyes, to which the black lines sunk beneath gave a strange brilliancy; then suddenly her head fell forward upon his breast and she lay limp and motionless in his arms.

He laid her down, looked long at the white face, fixed and ghastly in the moonlight. Then he felt himself seized once more with