Turning, he went back, swaying as he walked, to his chair, and sinking into it sat there a minute with half-closed eyes; then raised his head and looked at me, with a shadow of the old arrogance, pride, and disdain upon his scarred face. "Not yet, captain?" he demanded. "To the heart, man! So I would strike an you sat here and I stood there."
"I know you would," I said, and going to the window I flung the dagger down into the empty street; then stood and watched the smoke across the river, and thought it strange that the sun shone and the birds sang.
When I turned to the room again, he still sat there in the great chair, a tragic, splendid figure, with his ruined face and the sullen woe of his eyes. "I had sworn to kill you," I said. "It is not just that you should live."
He gazed at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless lips. "Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy," he said. "Within a week I shall be gone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead upon the floor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons, had Nicolo whom men called the Black Death, - poisons swift and strong, or subtle and slow. Day and night, the earth and sunshine have become hateful to me. I will go to the fires of hell, and see if they can make me forget, - can make me forget the face of a woman." He was speaking half to me, half to himself. "Her eyes are dark and large," he said, "and there are shadows beneath them, and the mark of tears. She stands there day and night with her eyes upon me. Her lips are parted, but she never speaks. There was a way that she had with her hands, holding them one within the other, thus" -
I stopped him with a cry for silence, and I leaned trembling against the table. "Thou wretch!" I cried. "Thou art her murderer!"
He raised his head and looked beyond me with that strange, faint smile. "I know," he replied, with the dignity which was his at times. "You may play the headsman, if you choose. I dispute not your right. But it is scarce worth while. I have taken poison."
The sunshine came into the room, and the wind from the river, and the trumpet notes of swans flying to the north. "The George is ready for sailing," he said at last. "To-morrow or the next day she will be going home with the tidings of this massacre. I shall go with her, and within a week they will bury me at sea. There is a stealthy, slow, and secret poison. . . . I would not die in a land where I have lost every throw of the dice, and I would not die in England for Buckingham to come and look upon my face, and so I took that poison. For the man upon the floor, there, - prison and death awaited him at home. He chose to flee at once."
He ceased to speak, and sat with his head bowed upon his breast.
"If you are content that it should be as it is," he said at length, "perhaps you will leave me? I am not good company to-day."
His hand was busy again with the letter upon the table, and his gaze was fixed beyond me. "I have lost," he muttered. "How I came to play my cards so badly I do not know. The stake was heavy, - I have not wherewithal to play again."
His head sank upon his outstretched arm. As for me, I stood a minute with set lips and clenched hands, and then I turned and went out of the room and down the stair and out into the street. In the dust beneath the window lay my dagger. I picked it up, sheathed it, and went my way.
ILLUSTRATION
