Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/264

 *er will the separation be." I heard a half-checked groan escape him. Afterwards he said: "Oh, what a loveliness grief hath lent you! Never did you look so beautiful before to-day."

"Yes," I sobbed, "you always said you liked 'em clinging."

"Let us say good-bye," he whispered. "At least, let us have done with this."

"Child, be brave," I recommended him, with a depth in irony that it was well he could not fathom.

"I blame you for my cowardice," he said.

There was a quiver in his face that even he could not conceal. I felt almost happy when I saw it, for it told me that at last even the untameable was tamed.

"You do not want to die?" I asked him, softly.

"No," he stammered, "I do not want to die."

"And why do you not want to die?" I continued, without pity. "There was a time, you know, when you were not so troubled with this scruple."

"'Tis an unnecessary question," he said, while a glance came from him that sank into my heart.

"Is it that you have come to love me?" says I, in my monumental innocence.

"I—a beggar?"

"Nay, sir," says I, "not a beggar. You lack his first essential, his humility. Suppose we say a sturdy rogue?"

"A sturdy rogue, then."