had, to her, the sentence of death, as softly, calmly, there
fell from his lips:

"I have no further need of you! You are in my way!"

For one instant her eyes remained fixed upon his face. Then slowly her
limbs relaxed, her body swayed lightly forward, and sank rather than
fell upon the thick pile of the carpet.

With a low, mocking laugh Lucien Apleon turned away from the dead form.
But before he passed out of the room he did a curious thing. A Bible
rested on one of the shelves of the room, he took the volume from its
place, opened it at the 13th of Revelation and taking a pen, he dipped
it into the red ink, and ran a red line around the 15th verse of the
chapter.

A moment later he had passed from the room.

The verse he had red-scored, read: "He had power to give life unto the
_image_ of the Beast, that the image of the Beast should both speak,
and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast
should be killed."

No wonder that Lucien Apleon smiled. For if presently, he was going to
cause the _image_ of the Beast to cause death to those who defied him,
how much more could he himself strike dead by the power of the Satanic
energy given to him.

Judith Apleon's body was conveyed to the crematorium and consumed. A
doctor had certified heart-disease; there was no inquest. Lucien did
not attend the funeral. The whole affair was carried through by the
undertaker. There were no mourners.

The Anti-christ spirit is marked by "Without natural affection," one
could not therefore expect Anti-christ himself to possess _any_
affection.

CHAPTER VI.

"A REED LIKE A ROD."

Events moved with startling rapidity. Events which, in the
swift-moving times of the last years of the nineteenth century, would
have occupied a decade to bring to pass, now occupied no more than the
same number of days. The revived Roman Empire was an established fact.
Moved by Satan, the ten kings had united to make Lucien Apleon their
Emperor. The nations, having cast off all belief in the orthodoxy of
the previous centuries, refusing to believe God's truth, utterly
scouting it, in fact, they had laid themselves open to receive
Anti-christ's lie, and had swallowed it wholesale.

Babylon had been rebuilt, and had become the _Commercial_ centre of the
reign of Lucien Apleon, even as Jerusalem was now to become his
religious centre.

Ralph Bastin was still Editor of the "Courier," though each week, each
day,