stressing. Her
lover turned upon his back and smiled sardonically at her out of a face
of paper. "I wish ye had been a little later, Kate," he said, "or that I
had begun with a hale arm. Good God! I've swallowed a hot cinder. I love
you, my dear; I love you, my dear. Oh, where the de'il's my flageolet?"
And then his head fell back.

With frantic hands she unloosed his cravat, sought and staunched the
wound with her handkerchief, and wept the while with no sound, though
her bosom, white like the spray of seas, seemed bound to burst above her
corsage.

Count Victor sheathed his weapon, and "Madame," said he with
preposterous inadequacy, "this--this--is distressing; this--this--" he
desired to offer some assistance, but baulked at the fury of the eyes
she turned on him.

"Oh, you!--you!--you!" she gasped, choking to say even so little. "It is
enough, is it not, that you have murdered him, without staying to see me
tortured?"

To this he could, of course, make no reply. His quandary was immense.
Two hundred yards away was that white phantom town shining in the
morning sun that rose enormous over the eastern hills beyond the little
lapping silver waves. A phantom town, with phantom citizens doubtless
prying through the staring eyes of those closed shutters. A phantom
town--town of fairy tale, with grotesque roofs, odd _corbeau_-stepped
gables, smokeless chimneys, all white with snow, and wild birds on its
terrace, preening in the blessed light of the sun. He stood with his
back to the pair upon the sand. "My God! 'tis a dream," said he. "I
shall laugh in a moment." He seemed to himself to stand thus an age, and
yet in truth it was only a pause of minutes when the Chamberlain spoke
with the tone of sleep and insensibility as from another world.

"I love you, my dear; I love you, my dear--Olivia."

Mrs. Petullo gave a cry of pain and staggered to her feet. She turned
upon Count Victor a face distraught and eyes that were wild with the
wretchedness of the disillusioned. Her fingers were playing nervously at
her lips; her shoulders were roughened and discoloured by the cold; her
hair falling round her neck gave her the aspect of a slattern. She, too,
looked at the facade of the town and saw her husband's windows shuttered
and indifferent to her grief.

"I do not know whether you have killed him or not," she said at last.
"It does not matter--oh! it matters all--no, no, it does not matter--Oh!
could you not--could you no