Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 3 (1927-03).djvu/82

 Roe did not move. His mind shook under her words, steadied, careened upward, searching through the fog of time. Something began to sing in his ears, like the humming sound of great wheels spinning in space. He felt like a man in a dream. Strange feelings and thoughts bore down on him. Remember? What? What was that upon his ankle? A chain. What was that falling from his hands ? An oar. What was that whistling through the air? A bloody thong. What was that burning, biting, tearing his flesh ? A knotted rope. What was that she had said? “Twenty stripes across the back.”

He swayed on his feet, staring at the carpeted floor. But he saw no carpet and no twining design. His starting eyes saw only dust—dust—and the print of a sandaled foot.

“Antony—can’t you forgive?”

What was it she had said? “Nothing mattered but that he find peace.” Compassion for his cruelty now, humility for her own cruelty then, renunciation of the love that had meant better than life. Sacrifice seeking to bestow the greatest gift in atonement.

Roe lifted his head, staring into her face. His hands clenched at his sides. The sting of the lash across tortured flesh passed. And suddenly strife and terror were gone, and nothing remained but a strange sense of having at last attained what he had hungered for two thousand years. One step and she was in his arms. His voice was crying incoherently in her ears:

“My queen! There is nothing to forgive—I love you.”

Eyes of flame and a heart of hell, Voice like the toll of a funeral bell; Thews of steel, and velvet paws, Rapier fangs and dagger claws.

A soul? the ravished soul of a man, Bound by the arts of the devil clan; Seared and chained by blood and lust, Its draggled wings trailed in the dust: A howling thing ’neath prison bars, Choked in the shadow of the stars; Wallowing in the crimson feast, Befouled by the fetid stench of the beast As out of the awful eyes it glares While the white-fanged monster rips and tears.

Oh moonlight trail and panting breath! Oh wolf! wolf! wolf!—Gray shaft of death!