"Before my very face!" I exclaimed--"O infamous woman! Have you no
shame?"
"None!" she said, with a wild smile--"I glory in my love for such a king
of worth and beauty! Look at him!--and then look at yourself in the
nearest mirror that reflects so poor and mean a picture of a man! How,
even in your egoism, could you deem it possible for a woman to love
_you_ when _he_ was near! Stand out of the light!--you interpose a
shadow between my god and me!"
As she uttered these mad words, her aspect was so strange and unearthly,
that out of sheer stupefied wonder, I mechanically did as she bade me,
and stood aside. She regarded me fixedly.
"I may as well say good-bye to you also,"--she observed--"For I shall
never live with you again."
"Nor I with you!" I said fiercely.
"Nor I with you--nor I with you!" she repeated like a child saying a
lesson--"Of course not!--if I do not live with you, you cannot live with
me!" She laughed discordantly; then turned her beseeching gaze once more
upon Lucio--"Good-bye!" she said.
He looked at her with a curious fixity, but returned no word in answer.
His eyes flashed coldly in the moonlight like sharp steel, and he
smiled. She regarded him with such passionate intentness that it seemed
as though she sought to draw his very soul into herself by the magnetism
of her glance,--but he stood unmoved, a very statue of fine disdain and
intellectual self-repression. My scarcely controlled fury broke out
again at the sight of her dumb yearning, and I gave vent to a shout of
scornful laughter.
"By heaven, a veritable new Venus and reluctant Adonis!" I cried
deliriously--"A poet should be here to immortalize so touching a scene!
Go--go!"--and I motioned her away with a furious gesture--"Go, if you do
not want me to murder you! Go, with the proud consciousness that you
have worked all the mischief and ruin that is most dear to the heart of
a woman,--you have spoilt a life and dishonoured a name,--you can do no
more,--your feminine triumph is complete! Go!--would to God I might
never see your face again!--would to God I had been spared the misery of
having married you!"
She paid no attention whatever to my words, but kept her eyes fixed on
Lucio. Retreating slowly, she seemed to feel rather than see her way to
the winding stair, and there, turning, she began to ascend. Half way up
she paused--looked back and fully confronted us once more,--with a wild
wicked rapture on her face she kissed her hands to Lucio, smiling like a
spectral woman in a dream,--then she went onward and upward step by
step, till the last white fold of her robe had vanished,--and we
two,--my friend and I,--were alone. Facing one another we stood,
silently,--I met his sombre eyes and thought I read an infinite
compassion in them!--then,--while I yet looked upon him, something
seemed to clutch my throat and stop my breathing,--his dark and
beautiful countenance appeared to me to grow suddenly lurid as with
fire,--a coronal of flame seemed to tremble above his brows,--the
moonlight glistened blood-red!--a noise was in my ears of mingled
thunder and music as though the silent organ at the end of the gallery
were played by hands invisible;--struggling against these delusive
sensations, I involuntarily stretched out my hands ...
"Lucio! ..." I gasped--"Lucio ... my friend! I think, ... I am, ...
dying! My heart is broken!"
As I spoke, a great blackness closed over me,--and I fell senseless.