Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/150

 when, nor where. Sleep, oblivion—he desired it as he hoped for salvation.

But it appeared that he could not sleep. The night was old, the moon in her glory; a pale, intense light filtered down through the overhanging date palms, and lit up the interior of the tent, sharply defining its every object with black shadow.

O'Rourke closed his eyes obstinately. It seemed as though his mental vision insisted upon repeating with maddening exactness the look that had been upon the face of Monsieur le Prince—that was: who was Monsieur le Prince no longer.

They had buried him in a shallow ditch in a grave dug in the sands of the desert by Mouchon, with a spade which the Irishman had succeeded in obtaining from the yacht without exciting comment. They had placed him on his side, with his face to the sea, looking away from the woman whom he had wronged, away from the man he had deluded and enticed into this futile scheme for empire. And yet the Irishman felt that he himself lay under the gaze of those dead eyes, miles distant though they were.

It appeared that he had nerves; the eyes haunted him. He cursed the habit of dueling, cursed himself for having permitted the fight to take place, for being an accessory before a fact of murder—justifiable murder in the eyes of men; but, nevertheless, plain murder.

And yet he was glad—that he might not honestly deny; he was glad that Monsieur le Prince was gone to his final accounting; glad that it was not by his hand; glad that the affair had freed from bonds that were worse than galling the woman upon whom O'Rourke's every thought was now centered; glad that he was now free to think of her without