"He only knew this for certain yesterday?"
"Only yesterday."
"Ah! but he must have suspected it long ago,"--she pointed towards the
statue--"when he began that."
"I don't understand," Fane said. "What can that marble have to do with
his health or illness?"
"When we first began to love each other," she said, "he began to work on
that. It was to be his marriage gift to me, my guardian angel. He told
me he would put all his soul into it, and that sometimes he fancied, if
he died before me, his soul would really enter into that statue and
watch over and guard me. 'A Silent Guardian' he has always called it.
He must have known."
"I do not think so," Fane said. "It was impossible he should."
The girl stood up. The tears were running over her face now. She turned
towards the statue.
"And he will be cold--cold like that!" she cried in a heart-breaking
voice. "His eyes will be blind and his hands nerveless, and his voice
silent."
She suddenly swayed and fainted into Fane's arms. He held her a moment;
and when he laid her down, a reluctance to let the slim form, lifeless
though it was, slip out of his grasp, came upon him. He remembered the
previous day, the doomed man going down the street--his thought as he
looked from the window of his consulting-room, "I am sorry that man is
going to die."
Now, as he leant over the white girl, he whispered, forming the very
words with his lips, "I am not sorry."
And the statue seemed to bend and to listen.