Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/299

285 Exhausted, he dropped it…. He could do no more…. And she was dying … dying … while the dead, torn from their eternal sleep, stared back at him with unseeing eyes.

How many hours had he been toiling? He did not know. The oblique rays of the sun had gradually risen on the walls, then vanished. Then the light which succeeded them faded in its turn.… Twilight had fallen … then darkness had come.

Stretched out on the altar steps, whither he had dragged himself with his last remaining strength, he closed his eyes and waited … waited for sleep or death. What did it matter, since Maria-Teresa was dead?