Spicca started and for one moment raised his head from the pillow.  It fell back almost instantly.  A look of supreme happiness flashed over the deathly features, followed by an expression of pain.

“Why did you marry him?” he asked in tones so loud that Orsino started, and Maria Consuelo looked up with streaming eyes.

She did not answer, but tried to soothe him, rising and caressing his hand, and smoothing his pillows.

“Tell me why you married him!” he cried again.  “I am dying—­I must know!”

She bent down very low and whispered into his ear.  He shook his head impatiently.

“Louder!  I cannot hear!  Louder!”

Again she whispered, more distinctly this time, and casting an imploring glance at Orsino, who was too much disturbed to understand.

“Louder!” gasped the dying man, struggling to sit up.  “Louder!  O my God!  I shall die without hearing you—­without knowing—­”

It would have been inhuman to torture the departing soul any longer.  Then Maria Consuelo made her last sacrifice.  She spoke in calm, clear tones.

“I married to save the man I loved.”

Spicca’s expression changed.  For fully twenty seconds his sunken eyes remained fixed, gazing into hers.  Then the light began to flash in them for the last time, keen as the lightning.

“God have mercy on you!  God reward you!” he cried.

The shadowy figure quivered throughout its length, was still, then quivered again, then sprang up suddenly with a leap, and Spicca was standing on the floor, clasping Maria Consuelo in his arms.  All at once there was colour in his face and the fire grew bright in his glance.

“Oh, my darling, I have loved you so!” he cried.

He almost lifted her from the ground as he pressed his lips passionately upon her forehead.  His long thin hands relaxed suddenly, and the light broke in his eyes as when a mirror is shivered by a blow.  For an instant that seemed an age, he stood upright, dead already, and then fell back all his length across the bed with wide extended arms.

There was a short, sharp sob, and then a sound of passionate weeping filled the silent room.  Strongly and tenderly Orsino laid his dead friend upon the couch as he had lain alive but two minutes earlier.  He crossed the hands upon the breast and gently closed the staring eyes.  He could not have had Maria Consuelo see him as he had fallen, when she next looked up.

A little later they stood side by side, gazing at the calm dead face, in a long silence.  How long they stood, they never knew, for their hearts were very full.  The sun was going down and the evening light filled the room.

“Did he tell you, before he died—­about me?” asked Maria Consuelo in a low voice.

“Yes.  He told me everything.”

Maria Consuelo went forward and bent over the face and kissed the white forehead, and made the sign of the Cross upon it.  Then she turned and took Orsino’s hand in hers.