"Marian!" "Yes," muttered Gilbert, "it is all true.

He is calling his wife." The revelation scarcely seemed a surprise to him.

Little by little that suspicion, so vague and dim at first, had gathered strength, and now that all his doubts received confirmation from those unconscious lips, it seemed to him as if he had known his friend's falsehood for a long time.
"Marian, come here.

Come, child, come," the sick man cried in feeble imploring tones.

"What, are you afraid of me?
Is this death?
Am I dead, and parted from her?
Would anything else keep her from me when I call for her, the poor child that loved me so well?
And I have wished myself free of her--God forgive me!--wished myself free." The words were muttered in broken gasping fragments of sentences; but Gilbert heard them and understood them very easily.