ath my feet.

I looked down on the little oval face that had lived so near to me
through the last year. How pale it was now, framed in the crimson mist
that stretched across the bed! At the slight, exquisite body so often
held in my arms. Was I to lose them now for all time?

"I did it all for you, because I wanted you so much. Do kiss me and
say you forgive. I shall not rest through a thousand years if you will
not."

Grey shadows were collecting in her face, some unseen hand seemed
drawing the eternal veil between us. To me, life, with all its
doings, was far away. I myself was standing in the uncertain mists of
death. Wide, limitless, and grey, the great plains of the hereafter
seemed opening before me, dim, silent, and mysterious.

Life, with its glare of colour, its triumphant music, its crash of
sound, was far behind me, almost forgotten; like clouds of indefinable
tint, piled up on some distant horizon, rose the memories of its
loves, its woes, its crimes.

Her weak voice calling on me to forgive seemed to have little meaning
to me now. I leant forward, clasping her dying body to me, and kissed
her lips, murmuring some words of consolation. Then the grey mists
rose up over my eyes sealing them, and I sank slowly into the perfect
darkness.

PART FIVE

THE WHITE NIGHT

CHAPTER XII

THE FLAMES OF LIFE'S FURNACE

A large room with open windows shewing a great square of hot blue sky
and a palm branch that swayed in front of them, bright gold in the
vivid light, was before my eyes as I lay alone, stretched out on my
bed, the mosquito-curtains draped round me, and raised on the side
next the windows.

How many weary days and nights had gone slowly by since that night
which hung veiled in crimson mists in my memory! Horrible night of
anger, of struggle, of death, of blood! Would its remembrance always
cling to me like this?

Hop Lee thought I had broken my promise to him. That was the poisoned
thorn that rankled and twisted and festered within me. No wonder he
had cursed me and wanted to kill me. And Suzee--how well she had
deceived me! I remembered her as she had sat trying to weep at the
supper-table in San Francisco, telling me of the last moments of Hop
Lee, her own devotion to him, and the child in their dying sufferings!
Husband and child that she had deserted so gladly! A dull anger burnt
within me at the thought of that deception, and most fiercely at the
knowledge that she had for