s straining flesh endured. He came through his inferno,
sweating, gasping, with broken prayers and the wrung, bitter crying of
smitten strength!

Again the black sea took him, bearing him to and fro, deadening his pain
but giving him no rest. He tossed on the troubled waters for
interminable ages. He watched a full moon rise blood-red and awful and
turn gradually to a whiteness of still more appalling purity. For a
long, long time he watched it, trying to recall something which eluded
him, chasing a will-o'-the-wisp memory round and round the fevered
labyrinths of his brain.

Then at last very suddenly it turned and confronted him. There in the
old-world garden that was every moment growing more distinct and
definite, he looked once more upon his wife's face in the moonlight, saw
her eyes of shrinking horror raised to his, heard her low-spoken words:
"I shall never forgive you."

The vision passed, blotted out by returning pain. He buried his head
beneath his arms and groaned. . . .

Again--hours after, it seemed,--the great cloud of his agony lifted. He
came to himself, feeling deadly sick but no longer gripped by that
fiendish torture. He raised himself on his elbows and faced the blinding
moonlight. It seemed to pierce him, but he forced himself to meet it. He
looked forth over the silent garden.

Strange silhouettes of shrubs weirdly fashioned filled the place. At
a little distance he caught the gleam of white marble, and there
came to him the tinkle of a fountain. He became aware again of raging
thirst--thirst that tore at the very root of his being. He gathered
himself together for the greatest effort of his life. The sound of
the water mocked him, maddened him. He would drink--he would
drink--before he died!

The man at his side lay with face upturned starkly to the moonlight. It
gleamed upon eyes that were glazed and sightless. The ground all around
them was dark with blood.

Slowly Piers raised himself, feeling his heart pump with the effort,
feeling the stiffened wound above it tear and gape asunder. He tried to
hold his breath while he moved, but he could not. It came in sharp,
painful gasps, sawing its way through his tortured flesh. But in spite of
it he managed to lift himself to his hands and knees; and then for a
long, long time he dared attempt no more. For he could feel the blood
flowing steadily from his wound, and a deadly faintness was upon him
against which he needed all his strength to fi