to him. An Arab had passed under the window,
singing in a withdrawn and drowsy voice a plaintive song of the East
which had mingled with the call to prayer. And then, he, Artois being
quite alone, had given way in his great pain and weakness. He remembered
feeling the tears slipping over his cheeks, one following another,
quickly, quickly. It had seemed as if they would never stop, as if
there would always be tears to flow from those sources deep within his
stricken body, his stricken soul.

He looked into the mirror. The door of the room was opened. A woman
stood upon the threshold. The sick man turned upon his pillow. He gazed
towards the woman. And his tears ceased. He was no longer alone. His
friend had come from her garden of Paradise to draw him back to life.

In the magic mirror of the _fattura della morte_ other scenes formed
themselves, were clearly visible for a moment, then dispersed,
dissolved--till scenes of the island came, till the last scene in the
mirror dawned faintly before his eyes.

He saw a dark room, and a woman more desolate than he had been when he
lay alone with the shadow of the palm-tree shifting on his face, and
heard the call to prayer. He saw Hermione in her room in the Casa del
Mare that night, after she knew.

Suddenly he put his hand to his eyes.

Those were the first tears his eyes had known since that evening in
Africa years and years ago.

He laid the death-charm down once more among the silver toys. But
he still looked at it as he sat back now in his chair, waiting for
Gaspare's return.

He gazed at the symbol of death. And he began to think how strangely
appropriate was its presence that night in the Casa del Mare, how almost
more than strange had been its bringing there by Ruffo--if indeed Ruffo
had brought it, as Gaspare declared. And Ruffo, all ignorantly and
unconsciously, had pierced the heart of Hermione.

Artois knew nothing of what had happened that day at Mergellina, but
he divined that it was Ruffo who, without words, had told Hermione the
truth. It must have been Ruffo, in whom the dead man lived again. And,
going beyond the innocent boy, deep into the shadows where lies so much
of truth, Artois saw the murdered man stirring from his sleep, unable to
rest because of the lie that had been coiled around his memory, making
it what it should not be. Perhaps only the dead know the true, the
sacred passion for justice. Perhaps only they are indifferent to
everything