l and the talisman, she scanned her lover's face and the
last morsel of the magic skin. As Pauline stood there, in all the beauty
of love and terror, Raphael was no longer able to control his thoughts;
memories of tender scenes, and of passionate and fevered joys,
overwhelmed the soul that had so long lain dormant within him, and
kindled a fire not quite extinct.

"Pauline! Pauline! Come to me----"

A dreadful cry came from the girl's throat, her eyes dilated with
horror, her eyebrows were distorted and drawn apart by an unspeakable
anguish; she read in Raphael's eyes the vehement desire in which she had
once exulted, but as it grew she felt a light movement in her hand, and
the skin contracted. She did not stop to think; she fled into the next
room, and locked the door.

"Pauline! Pauline!" cried the dying man, as he rushed after her; "I love
you, I adore you, I want you, Pauline! I wish to die in your arms!"

With unnatural strength, the last effort of ebbing life, he broke down
the door, and saw his mistress writhing upon a sofa. Pauline had vainly
tried to pierce her heart, and now thought to find a rapid death by
strangling herself with her shawl.

"If I die, he will live," she said, trying to tighten the knot that she
had made.

In her struggle with death her hair hung loose, her shoulders were bare,
her clothing was disordered, her eyes were bathed in tears, her face
was flushed and drawn with the horror of despair; yet as her exceeding
beauty met Raphael's intoxicated eyes, his delirium grew. He sprang
towards her like a bird of prey, tore away the shawl, and tried to take
her in his arms.

The dying man sought for words to express the wish that was consuming
his strength; but no sounds would come except the choking death-rattle
in his chest. Each breath he drew sounded hollower than the last, and
seemed to come from his very entrails. At the last moment, no longer
able to utter a sound, he set his teeth in Pauline's breast. Jonathan
appeared, terrified by the cries he had heard, and tried to tear away
the dead body from the grasp of the girl who was crouching with it in a
corner.

"What do you want?" she asked. "He is mine, I have killed him. Did I not
foresee how it would be?"

EPILOGUE

"And what became of Pauline?"

"Pauline? Ah! Do you sometimes spend a pleasant winter evening by your
own fireside, and give yourself up luxuriously to memories of love or
youth, while you watch the glow of