time could he whisper,--"Lygia!"

The basin trembled in her hand at that sound, but she turned on him eyes
full of sadness.

"Peace be with thee!" answered she, in a low voice.

She stood there with extended arms, her face full of pity and sorrow.
But he gazed, as if to fill his sight with her, so that after his lids
were closed the picture might remain under them. He looked at her face,
paler and smaller than it had been, at the tresses of dark hair, at the
poor dress of a laboring woman; he looked so intently that her snowy
forehead began to grow rose-colored under the influence of his look.
And first he thought that he would love her always; and second, that
that paleness of hers and that poverty were his work,--that it was he
who had driven her from a house where she was loved, and surrounded with
plenty and comfort, and thrust her into that squalid room, and clothed
her in that poor robe of dark wool.

He would have arrayed her in the costliest brocade, in all the jewels of
the earth; hence astonishment, alarm, and pity seized him, and sorrow so
great that he would have fallen at her feet had he been able to move.

"Lygia," said he, "thou didst not permit my death."

"May God return health to thee," she answered, with sweetness.

For Vinicius, who had a feeling both of those wrongs which he had
inflicted on her formerly, and those which he had wished to inflict on
her recently, there was a real balsam in Lygia's words. He forgot at