im. Did I not know the process? Had
not I, who was twice his age, gone through it myself? Was I not going
through it afresh even then, although her sweet and passionate gaze was
not for me? Yes, alas, I was! Alas, that I should have to confess that
at that very moment I was rent by mad and furious jealousy. I could
have flown at him, shame upon me! The woman had confounded and almost
destroyed my moral sense, as she was bound to confound all who looked
upon her superhuman loveliness. But--I do not quite know how--I got the
better of myself, and once more turned to see the climax of the tragedy.

"Oh, great Heaven!" gasped Leo, "art thou a woman?"

"A woman in truth--in very truth--and thine own spouse, Kallikrates!"
she answered, stretching out her rounded ivory arms towards him, and
smiling, ah, so sweetly!

He looked and looked, and slowly I perceived that he was drawing nearer
to her. Suddenly his eye fell upon the corpse of poor Ustane, and he
shuddered and stopped.

"How can I?" he said hoarsely. "Thou art a murderess; she loved me."

Observe, he was already forgetting that he had loved her.

"It is naught," she murmured, and her voice sounded sweet as the
night-wind passing through the trees. "It is naught at all. If I have
sinned, let my beauty answer for my sin. If I have sinned, it is for
love of thee: let my sin, therefore, be put away and forgotten;" and
once more she stretched out her arms and whispered "_Come_," and then in
another few seconds it was all over.

I saw him struggle--I saw him even turn to fly; but her eyes drew
him more strongly than iron bonds, and the magic of her beauty and
concentrated will and passion entered into him and overpowered him--ay,
even there, in the presence of the body of the woman who had loved him
well enough to die for him. It sounds horrible and wicked enough, but he
should not be too greatly blamed, and be sure his sin will find him out.
The temptress who drew him into evil was more than human, and her beauty
was greater than the loveliness of the daughters of men.

I looked up again and now her perfect form lay in his arms, and her lips
were pressed against his own; and thus, with the corpse of his dead
love for an altar, did Leo Vincey plight his troth to her red-handed
murderess--plight it for ever and a day. For those who sell themselves
into a like dominion, paying down the price of their own honour, and
throwing their soul into the balance to sink the scal