ly vitalised.
The guitar slid down from her lap. She drew out the glass stopper,
holding the flask up a moment to the setting sun and letting it blaze
through the liquid. Then swiftly, as I made sure she would carry it
to her lips, she bent over Farrell and whispered some soft word of
the night that pierced his stupor so that he stirred and lolled his
head around. . . . Yes, and for a farewell kiss--which I watched
without jealousy. . . .

"But as their mouths drew apart, and before his swollen lips could
close again, she had slipped the mouth of the flask between them and
the cordial was pouring down his throat. . . .

"She had defeated me. . . . I watched her without uttering a word.
Farrell let out a guttural sort of _ah-h!_ and sat up somewhat higher
against her knee, opening his chest and breathing in new life as the
Chartreuse coursed through his veins. Santa turned the flask
upside-down, and handed it to me.

"'I have won!' she said softly. 'Men at the last are--what is the
word?--magnanimous, mostly: and that is why a woman can usually win
in the end.'

"'You have thrown away,' said I, 'so much of life as I gave you,
renouncing much. You have sacrificed yourself.'

"'That was _my_ share of the price, my friend. Now continue to be
great, as for these many days you have been good. There is a bad
pain about my heart. With that other small bottle of yours, and with
that needle I have seen you use . . . You will? Ah, how much better
it is to be friends than enemies, when the world--even this little
shrinking world--is so wide yet--so wide--'

"So I took her wrist and, she scarcely wincing, injected the last
drop of my morphia: yes, Roddy, and kissed the spot like any poor
fool, she not resisting! . . . Her last words were that I should lay
the guitar back again on her lap. . . . Oh, damn it, man! it was
everything your damned sneerer would choose to call it. . . . But I
tell you I held my ear close to her breast for hours; and in my
light-headedness I heard the muted music lulling her: and in and out
of her breathing, when she was long past speech--and above the
stertorous snoring of my enemy laid at her feet--I heard distant
waves breaking in a low chime to some words of a verse I had once
quoted to her on a night when her song had made the crews sorrowful
for a while before lifting their hearts again to make them
merry--music to ripple, ripple:"

'--Ripple in my hearing
Like waves u