Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/337

 coldness upon him which always came before the pang, waiting, waiting, a deathly dew on his forehead, for the end; and I, I who loved him better than life, watched him. And, so Fate willed it, the pang never came.”

“You watched him?” I whispered.

Harley turned to me slowly.

“Don’t you understand, Knox?” he said, in a voice curiously unlike his own.

“Ah, my friend,” Madame de Stämer laid her hand upon my arm with that caressing gesture which I knew, “you do understand, don’t you? The power to use my limbs returned to me during the last week that I lived in Nice.”

She bent forward and raised her face, in an almost agonized appeal to Val Beverley.

“My dear, my dear,” she said, “forgive me, forgive me! But I loved him so. One day, I think”—her glance sought my face—“you will know. Then you will forgive.”

“Oh, Madame, Madame,” whispered the girl, and began to sob silently.

“Is it enough?” asked Madame de Stämer, raising her head, and looking defiantly at Paul Harley. “Last night, you, M. Harley, who have genius, nearly brought it all to nothing. You passed the door in the shrubbery just when Juan was preparing to go out. I was watching from the window above. Then, when you had gone, he came out—smoking his last cigarette.

“I went to my place, entering the tower room by the door from that corridor. I opened the window. It had been carefully oiled. It was soundless. I was cold as one already dead, but love made me strong. I had seen him suffer. I took the rifle from its hiding-place, the heavy rifle which so few women could use.