languid. "Art ready?" I demanded.

"Yea," he answered in a strange voice, "but I would that she did
not stand there with her head upon your breast.... I too loved thee,
Jocelyn,--Jocelyn lying dead in the forest!"

I struck at him with the dagger in my right hand, and wounded him, but
not deeply, in the side. He gave blow for blow, but his poniard scarce
drew blood, so nerveless was the arm that would have driven it home. I
struck again, and he stabbed weakly at the air, then let his arm drop to
his side, as though the light and jeweled blade had weighed it down.

Loosening the clasp of our left hands, I fell back until the narrow
scarlet field was between us. "Hast no more strength than that?" I
cried. "I cannot murder you!"

He stood looking past me as into a great distance. He was bleeding, but
I had as yet been able to strike no mortal blow. "It is as you choose,"
he said. "I am as one bound before you. I am sick unto death."

Turning, he went back, swaying as he walked, to his chair, and sinking
into it sat there a minute with half-closed eyes; then raised his head
and looked at me, with a shadow of the old arrogance, pride, and disdain
upon his scarred face. "Not yet, captain?" he demanded. "To the heart,
man! So I would strike an you sat here and I stood there."

"I know you would," I said, and going to the window I flung the dagger
down into the empty street; then stood and watched the smoke across the
river, and thought it strange that the sun shone and the birds sang.

When I turned to the room again, he still sat there in the great chair,
a tragic, splendid figure, with his ruined face and the sullen woe of
his eyes. "I had sworn to kill you," I said. "It is not just that you
should live."

He gazed at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless lips.
"Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy," he said. "Within a week I shall be
gone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead upon the
floor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons, had Nicolo whom men
called the Black Death,--poisons swift and strong, or subtle and slow.
Day and night, the earth and sunshine have become hateful to me. I will
go to the fires of hell, and see if they can make me forget,--can make
me forget the face of a woman." He was speaking half to me, half to
himself. "Her eyes are dark and large," he said, "and there are shadows
beneath them, and the mark of tears. She stands there day and night with
her eyes upon me. Her l