"Let me behold the face." Long his eyes rested on the likeness I held before him.

At last, as one in a dream-- "Well-beloved," he sighed.

"Bien aimee!" And down his grey, haggard cheeks the tears came slowly.

"Forgive this weakness, monsieur," he whispered brokenly.

"We were to have been wed in a month, had I lived." He ended with a sob, and when next he spoke it was more labouredly, as though that sob had robbed him of the half of what vitality remained.
"Tell her, monsieur, that my dying thoughts were of her.