Page:The council of seven.djvu/170

 terms with life. After all, the lust for power was greater than the will to live.

Lying there, hour after hour, in the uncanny silence of that room, the conviction had grown until now it enfolded him like the arms of a woman, that the sleep upon which he was about to enter would be his last. This brief but intense review of experience had pierced him so deeply that it began to seem certain that the end was now near.

At last, he fell into a doze. But hardly had consciousness left him, when, with a violent start, he awoke. Somebody had entered the room. The electric light next the door had been switched on. He sat up in bed to confront a face drawn and haggard, and a pair of eyes somber, ruthless, terrible.

They were the eyes of John Endor.