s. She
spoke with an accent of wild joy:

"I knew you would come back in time! You are safe now. I have done it!
I would never, never have let him--" Her voice died out, while her eyes
shone at him as when the sun breaks through a mist. "Never get it back.
Oh, my beloved!"

He bowed his head gravely, and said in his polite. Heystian tone:

"No doubt you acted from instinct. Women have been provided with their
own weapon. I was a disarmed man, I have been a disarmed man all my life
as I see it now. You may glory in your resourcefulness and your profound
knowledge of yourself; but I may say that the other attitude, suggestive
of shame, had its charm. For you are full of charm!"

The exultation vanished from her face.

"You mustn't make fun of me now. I know no shame. I was thanking God
with all my sinful heart for having been able to do it--for giving you
to me in that way--oh, my beloved--all my own at last!"

He stared as if mad. Timidly she tried to excuse herself for disobeying
his directions for her safety. Every modulation of her enchanting voice
cut deep into his very breast, so that he could hardly understand the
words for the sheer pain of it. He turned his back on her; but a sudden
drop, an extraordinary faltering of her tone, made him spin round. On
her white neck her pale head dropped as in a cruel drought a withered
flower droops on its stalk. He caught his breath, looked at her closely,
and seemed to read some awful intelligence in her eyes. At the moment
when her eyelids fell as if smitten from above by an the gleam of
old silver familiar to him from boyhood, the very invisible power, he
snatched her up bodily out of the chair, and disregarding an unexpected
metallic clatter on the floor, carried her off into the other room. The
limpness of her body frightened him. Laying her down on the bed, he
ran out again, seized a four-branched candlestick on the table, and ran
back, tearing down with a furious jerk the curtain that swung stupidly
in his way, but after putting the candlestick on the table by the bed,
he remained absolutely idle. There did not seem anything more for him
to do. Holding his chin in his hand he looked down intently at her still
face.

"Has she been stabbed with this thing?" asked Davidson, whom suddenly he
saw standing by his side and holding up Ricardo's dagger to his sight.
Heyst uttered no word of recognition or surprise. He gave Davidson only
a dumb look of unutterable awe, the