Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/299

Rh earnest were my supplications. Why they were so pitilessly rejected, He alone can tell.

Forgive me, if I hasten on to the conclusion of a story which is unspeakably painful to me. Never did mortal man experience a more terrible calamity than that which I am now about to relate. As long as I live I shall never cease to bewail it. But, although the memory of it is ever fresh in my mind, my very soul seems to recoil in horror each time that I attempt to put it into words.

We had passed a tranquil night, and it was now drawing to an end. Believing my beloved mistress to be asleep, I scarce dared to breathe, lest I should disturb her. As daylight was dawning, I touched her hands, and found that they were trembling and icy-cold. I drew them up to my bosom, to warm them there. She felt me raising them, and, with an effort to press mine in return, she murmured in a feeble voice that she believed her last hour had come.

At first I took this to be merely the ordinary language of misfortune, and offered only the tender consolations of love in response. But her oft-repeated sighs, her silence when I questioned her, the convulsive tightening of her