Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/153

 he wept bitterly when he had seen her pass, paler and weaker every day.

She said to me—

"I have spoken but once to this singular man, and it seems to me I have known him for years."

And when they met she returned his bow with a grave and charming smile. I knew she was happy—she so lonely and dying. I knew she was happy to be loved with such constancy and respect, with this exaggerated poesy, with this devotion ready for all hazards. And yet, faithful to her obstinate though high-minded resolve, she absolutely refused to receive him, to know his name, or to speak to him. She said, "No, no, that would spoil our strange friendship. We must remain strangers to one another."

As to him, he was of a certainty a kind of Don Quixote, for he took no steps to approach her. He was determined to keep to the letter the absurd promise he had made to her in the train.

Often during the long hours of weakness she rose from her sofa to draw back the curtains, and look if he were there below the window. And when she had seen him, always immovably seated on his bench, she returned to her couch with a smile on her lips.

She died one morning about six o’clock. As I left the hotel he came to me, his face distorted; he had already heard the news.

"I should like to see her for a second in your presence," he said.

I took his arm and re-entered the house.

When he was by the bedside of the dead, he took her hand and kissed it, a long, long kiss. Then he fled like a madman.