to her cheeks, hair
fallen in disorder. Her eyes were big with the horror of her thoughts;
she was breathless as one cast by breakers upon the sand. She looked in
through the open door.

Morgan was standing like a soldier a little way inside the door, his
rifle carried at port arms, denying by the very sternness of his pose
the passage of any foot across that threshold of tragedy. There was
nothing in his bearing of a wounded man. Beyond him a few feet lay the
bodies of the two infamous guards who had been posted at the door to
take his life; along the glistening bar, near its farther end, Peden
stretched with face to the floor, his appealing hands outreaching.

A gambling table had been upset, chairs strewn in disorder about the
floor, when the rabble was cleared out of the place. Only Morgan
remained there with the dead men, like a lone tragedian whose part was
not yet done.

Rhetta looked for one terrifying moment on that scene, its tragic detail
impressed on her senses as a revelation of lightning leaps out of the
blackest night to be remembered for its surrounding terror. And in that
moment Morgan saw her face; the horror, the revulsion, the sickness of
her shocked soul. A moment, a glance, and she was gone. He was alone
amidst the blood that the curse of Ascalon had led his hand to pour out
in such prodigality in that profaned place.

Long after the fearful waste of battle had been cleared from Peden's
floor, and the lights of that hall were put out; long after the most
wakeful householder of Ascalon had sought his bed, and the last horseman
had gone from its hushed streets, Morgan walked in the moonlight,
keeping vigil with his soul. The curse of blood had descended upon him,
and she whose name he could speak only in his heart, had come to look
upon his infamy and flee from before his face.

Time had saved him for this excruciating hour; all his poor adventures,
slow striving, progression upward, had been designed to culminate in the
mockery of this night. Fate had shaped him to his bitter ending, drawing
him on with lure as bright as sunrise. And now, as he walked slowly in
the moonlight, feet encumbered by this tragedy, he felt that the essence
had been wrung out of life. His golden building was come to confusion,
his silver hope would ring its sweet chime in his heart no more. From
that hour she would abhor him, and shrink from his polluted hand.

He resented the subtle indrawing of circumstance that ha