indeed, and the Beast, at its hour, had sprung; it
had sprung in that twilight of the cold April when,
pale, ill, wasted, but all beautiful, and perhaps
even then recoverable, she had risen from her chair
to stand before him and let him imaginably guess.
It had sprung as he didn’t guess; it had sprung
as she hopelessly turned from him, and the mark, by
the time he left her, had fallen where it was
to fall. He had justified his fear and achieved
his fate; he had failed, with the last exactitude,
of all he was to fail of; and a moan now rose to his
lips as he remembered she had prayed he mightn’t
know. This horror of waking—this
was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which
the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze.
Through them, none the less, he tried to fix it and
hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might
feel the pain. That at least, belated and bitter,
had something of the taste of life. But the
bitterness suddenly sickened him, and it was as if,
horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of
his image, what had been appointed and done.
He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking
Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by
a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the
leap that was to settle him. His eyes darkened—it
was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination,
to avoid it, he flung himself, face down, on the tomb.