he soul and they heard the music of the spheres.

Then she seemed to hear the voice of the prince: "You should be grateful
to me. Trust me, child, I am bringing you that love of which you
dreamed. _Le Dieu, c'est moi!_"

Yes, it was the voice of doom which had spoken from those sardonic lips.
The dark which annihilates time made their love a century old.

"In all the world," she whispered, "there is one man for every woman. It
is the hand of Heaven which gives me to you."

"Come closer--so! And here I have your head beside mine as God
foredoomed. Listen! I have power to look through the dark and to see
your eyes--how blue they are!--and to read your soul beneath them. We
have scarcely spoken a hundred words and yet I see it all. Through a
thousand centuries our souls have been born a thousand times and in
every life we have met, and known--"

And through the utter dark, the merciful dark, the deep, strong music of
his voice went on, and she listened, and forgot the truth and closed her
eyes against herself.

* * * * *

On the night which closed the third day the prince approached the door
of the sealed room. To the officer of the secret police, who stood on
guard, he said: "Nothing has been heard."

"Early this afternoon there were two shots, I think."

"Nonsense. There are carpenters doing repair work on the floor above.
You mistook the noise of their hammers."

He waved the man away, and as he fitted the key into the lock he was
laughing softly to himself: "Now for the revelation, the downward head,
the shame. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

He opened the door and flashed on his electric lantern. They lay upon a
couch wrapped in each other's arms. He had shot her through the heart
and then turned the weapon on himself; his last effort must have been to
draw her closer. About them was wrapped the chain, idle and loose.
Surely death had no sting for them and the grave no victory, for the
cold features were so illumined that the prince could hardly believe
them dead.

He turned the electric torch on the painter. He was a man about fifty,
with long, iron-gray hair, and a stubble of three days' growth covering
his face. It was a singularly ugly countenance, strong, but savagely
lined, and the forehead corrugated with the wrinkles of long, mental
labor. But death had made Bertha beautiful. Her eyes under the shadow
of her lashes, seemed a deep-sea blue, and her loose, brown hair,
falling across t