e her; then, _then_ he would have lived.
_She_ had lived--who could say now with what passion?--since she had
loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah how it
hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of
her use. Her spoken words came back to him--the chain stretched and
stretched. The Beast had lurked indeed, and the Beast, at its hour, had
sprung; it had sprung in that twilight of the cold April when, pale, ill,
wasted, but all beautiful, and perhaps even then recoverable, she had
risen from her chair to stand before him and let him imaginably guess. It
had sprung as he didn't guess; it had sprung as she hopelessly turned
from him, and the mark, by the time he left her, had fallen where it
_was_ to fall. He had justified his fear and achieved his fate; he had
failed, with the last exactitude, of all he was to fail of; and a moan
now rose to his lips as he remembered she had prayed he mightn't know.
This horror of waking--_this_ was knowledge, knowledge under the breath
of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze. Through them, none
the less, he tried to fix it and hold it; he kept it there before him so
that he might feel the pain. That at least, belated and bitter, had
something of the taste of life. But the bitterness suddenly sickened
him, and it was as if, horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of
his image, what had been appointed and done. He saw the Jungle of his
life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as
by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to
settle him. His eyes darkened--it was close; and, instinctively turning,
in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, face down, on the
tomb.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE***

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