Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/252

 a certainty for me, let us not forget what we have to rejoice over."

"Rejoice?" the girl whispered bitterly. "Joy? For us?"

"Rejoice that you have made me glad," he said. "A man has but one life. I have had much joy in mine. My misfortune has brought me more joy than I should have thought possible. I knew I loved you, I was wild with elation at the thought of returning successful and marrying you. But what was that to the joy of knowing that you loved me well enough to cling to me, a failure, an outcast, a prisoner! Your first letter was a joy too great to be described. I thrilled with ecstasy at the thought of your loving me well enough to burden your estates to ransom me!"

"And it was all for nothing," the girl wailed. "If you have to die anyhow."

"Not all for nothing," he argued, "there are deaths and deaths. It is bad enough to have to die young. But to die clean and fed and clothed as a Roman should be is far less terrible than to die as I should have died, racked with fever, starved to a skeleton, slashed with festering wounds, shackled in a vile hovel in the mountains, a sty, dark, noisome, filthy and verminous. You saved me from all that."