Tell him, good sir,--you are kind and love him, but not as I do,--tell him that this golden hair of mine has streaks of white in these terrible two months; that these eyes he loved are worn with weeping.

Tell him--" But her voice failed her, and she staggered against the wall, hiding her face in her hands.

A trembling breath, a struggle, a great wild sob: the long-sealed tears were free, and flowed fast over her hands.
"Oh, no, no," she moaned, "you must not tell him that." Then choking down her agony she turned to me: "You will not--you cannot tell him of this?
I am weak, ill, but I will bear everything for--for him." The great effort exhausted her, and I think that if I had not caught her she would have fallen, and she would have hurt herself very much on the stone floor.

But she is young, and I am not very strong, and could not have held her up.

So I knelt, letting her weight come on my shoulder.
The fair head rested pathetically against my old coat, and I tried to wipe away her tears with her long golden hair; for I had not any handkerchief.