Page:The Great Secret.djvu/269

Rh caprices and frailties when we think of your sacrifices and abrogations since the world began.

The mother lay before them, passive and ready to yield to their necessities, while the adopted sons faced each other.

"Let's draw lots, that's the fairest way," said Dennis.

"Yes," answered the doctor, and from his pocket he drew an envelope, frayed and dirty. Tearing off two pieces, one longer and the other shorter, he turned his back for a moment on his comrade, and arranged them, then he turned once more. "Draw!"

Dennis was lucky, he had first drink from that life fluid.

The two men knelt down together while the doctor made his incision in the thin throat, then he drew back and watched, with ravenous eyes, the moon, while his companion fastened his thirsty lips to the orifice and glutted himself from the still warm blood. After a time, which seemed to be an eternity to the waiting one, Dennis drew back with a sigh of infinite bliss and content, and straightway fell asleep by the side of the fragile victim. Then the doctor had his turn, and gleaned strength and comfort from the warm and ruddy draught, until he also was overcome and forgot to drink.

While both slept calmly and dreamlessly, the moon sailed above them and the dead woman, casting that backward glance over them with that strange grotesque humanising leer which the moon at this stage expresses.

The woman lay serenely by the side of the men with her naked bosom exposed and marble-like, and her still face once more beautiful in its chaste repose.

The shark also drew some feet closer to the boat, wondering, as he sniffed in those warm fumes, if his time had not also arrived.