"If you will join me--in my last drink?"
For answer she filled his glass and hers.
He raised it and looked at her.
"I give you--the sweetest thing in the world."
Her lip curled.
"Love?"
His black eyes glittered between their narrowed lids.
"The power to avenge the wrongs of the helpless."
He set down his empty glass and fumbled in his pocket for a paper which
he handed her to read.
"It's always well to know what you're signing," he said, and he watched
her face as her eyes followed the lines, with the intent yet impersonal
scrutiny of a specialist studying his case.
She looked, as she read, like a corpse that has been propped to a
sitting position, with nostrils sunken and lips of Parian marble. Her
hand shook with a violence which recalled her to herself, and when she
raised her eyes they looked as though the iris itself had faded. The
Dago Duke seemed absorbed in the curious effect.