ears. . . . Everythiné around them disappeared,—only they remained; that emptiness grew broader and broader, it grew above them and below them, and they were in the midst. . . .
He slowly opened his eyelids.
He did not speak a word; he only looked somewhere into the distance, between the branches. Then he gently dropped her hands, and sat a little longer:
"Not yet to-day, but, perhaps, in ten or fourteen days,” he coughed, “it will all be over.”
Tears sparkled in Lucy’s eyes.
He looked a long time at them, as if they were a relief to him. . . . “Well, it is a fine sundown,” he whispered softly.
“Is it true,” he suddenly asked in a strong voice, “that you are . . . his mistress?”
“I am not, I am not!”
“Of course,” he again spoke quietly, in apathetic peace, “what difference does it make? To-day the whole town knows your
