(this was the trick), and soar to
opposite platforms again, amid frenzied applause. There were no nets.

That was what ought to occur.

I stood bowing to the floor of tiny upturned heads, and jerking the
ropes a little. Then I let Sally's rope go with a push, and it dropped
away from me, and in a few seconds she had it safe in her strong hand.
She was taller than me, with a fuller figure, yet she looked quite small
on her distant platform. All the evening I had been thinking of fat old
Mrs. Cartledge messing and slopping among cod and halibut on white
tiles. I could not get Bursley and my silly infancy out of my head. I
followed my feverish career from the age of fifteen, when that strange
Something in me, which makes an artist, had first driven me forth to
conquer two continents. I thought of all the golden loves I had scorned,
and my own love, which had been ignored, unnoticed, but which still
obstinately burned. I glanced downwards and descried Valdes precisely
where Sally had said he would be. Valdes, what a fool you were! And I
hated a fool. I am one of those who can love and hate, who can love and
despise, who can love and loathe the same object in the same moment.
Then I signalled to Sally to plunge, and my eyes filled with tears. For,
you see, somehow, in some senseless sentimental way, the thought of fat
Mrs. Cartledge and my silly infancy had forced me to send Sally the red
rope, not the blue one. We exchanged ropes on alternate nights, but this
was her night for the blue one.

She swung over, alighting accurately at my side with that exquisite
outward curve of the spine which had originally attracted me to her.

'You sent me the red one,' she said to me, after she had acknowledged
the applause.

'Yes,' I said. 'Never mind; stick to it now you've got it. Here's the
red light. Have you seen Valdes?'

She nodded.

I took the blue light and clutched the blue rope. Instead of
murder--suicide, since it must be one or the other. And why not? Indeed,
I censured myself in that second for having meant to kill Sally. Not
because I was ashamed of the sin, but because the revenge would have
been so pitiful and weak. If Valdes the matchless was capable of passing
me over and kneeling to the pretty thing----

I stood ready. The world was to lose that fineness, that distinction,
that originality, that disturbing subtlety, which constituted Paquita
Qita. I plunged.

... I was on the other platform. The rope had he