Tell Madame that I no longer regret dying, since she has remembered me." At this word "dying," pronounced by one whose life seemed to hang on a thread, the masked lady could not restrain her tears, which flowed under her mask, and which appeared upon her cheeks just where the mask left her face bare.

If Guiche had been in fuller possession of his senses, he would have seen her tears roll like glistening pearls, and fall upon his bed.

The lady, forgetting that she wore her mask, raised her hand as though to wipe her eyes, and meeting the rough velvet, she tore away her mask in anger and threw it on the floor.

At the unexpected apparition before him, which seemed to issue from a cloud, Guiche uttered a cry and stretched out his arms toward her; but every word perished on his lips, and his strength seemed utterly abandoning him.

His right hand, which had followed his first impulse, without calculating the amount of strength he had left, fell back again upon the bed, and immediately afterward the white linen was stained with a larger spot than before.