"I--I cannot--"
"Go," said Sir Thorald, in a distinct voice.
When she had gone, Jack bent over Sir Thorald. A great pity filled him, and he touched the half-opened hand with his own.
Sir Thorald looked up at him wistfully.
"I am not worth it," he said.
"Yes, we all are worth it."
"I am not," gasped Sir Thorald. "Jack, you are good. Do you believe, at least, that I loved her?"
"Yes, if you say so."
"I do--in the shadow of death."
Jack was silent.
"I never loved--before," said Sir Thorald.
In the stillness that followed Jack tried to comprehend the good or evil in this stricken man. He could not; he only knew that a great love that a man might bear a woman made necessary a great sacrifice if that love were unlawful. The greater the love the more certain the sacrifice--self-sacrifice on the altar of unselfish love, for there is no other kind of love that man may bear for woman.
It wearied Jack to try to think it out. He could not; he only knew that it was not his to judge or to condemn.
"Will you give me your hand?" asked Sir Thorald.
Jack laid his hand in the other's feverish one.
"Don't call her," he said, distinctly; "I am dying."
Presently he withdrew his hand and turned his face to the wall.
For a long time Jack sat there, waiting. At last he spoke: "Sir Thorald?"
But Sir Thorald had been dead for an hour.
When Alixe entered Jack took her slim, childish hands and looked into her eyes. She understood and went to her dead, laying down her tired little head on the sheeted breast.