He felt no pain, only dreamy ease.  He was resting softly on a bank of flowers, in the heart of a summer’s day.  He was filled with peace and love, and peace and love were around him.  Some one was nestling beside him; was it not the woman,—­the bright-eyed, smiling gypsy with whom he had plighted troth?—­surely it was she.

“Salome,—­Salome, are you here?  Touch me,—­lay your cheek by mine.  So,—­give me your hand.  I love you, my pretty pet,—­your Manetho loves you!”

The slow sentences ended.  Nurse had laid her unsightly head beside his on the pillow, and the two were happy in each other.  O piteous, revolting, solemn sight!  Those faces, grief-smitten, old; long ago, in passionate and lawless youth, they had perchance lain thus and murmured loving words.  And now for a moment they met and loved again,—­while death knocked at their chamber door!

But Balder had perceived a startling significance in Manetho’s words.  He took Gnulemah by the hand and led her to the eastern window.  A flash greeted them, creating a momentary world, which started from the womb of night, and vanished again before one could say “It is there!” Then followed a long-drawn, intermittent rumble, as if the fragments of the spectre world were tumbling avalanche-wise into chaos.

“I remember now about the dandelions,” Balder said.  “Was not Nurse with us then?”

“Yes,” answered Gnulemah; “and it was she and Hiero who took me from you.  But why does he call her Salome? and who is Manetho?”

Balder did not reply.  He leant against the window-frame and gazed out into the black storm.  Knowing what he now did, it required no great stretch of ingenuity to unravel Manetho’s secret.—­He turned to Gnulemah, and, taking her in his arms, kissed her with a defiant kind of ardor.

“What is it?” she whispered, clinging to him with a reflex of his own unspoken emotion.

“We are safe!—­But that man shall not die without hearing the truth,” he added, sternly.

Again there was a dazzling lightning-flash, and the thunder seemed to break at their very ears.  By a quick, sinuous movement, Gnulemah freed herself from his arm and looked at him with her grand eyes,—­night-black, lit each with a sparkling star.  Her feminine intuition perceived a change in him, though she could not fathom its cause.  It jarred the fineness of their mutual harmony.

“Our happiness should make others’ greater,” said she.

He looked into her eyes with a gaze so ardent that their lids drooped; and the tone of his answer, though lover-like, had more of masculine authority in it than she had yet heard from him.

“My darling, you do not know what wrong he has done you—­and others.  It is only justice that he should learn how God punishes such as he!”

“Will not God teach him?” said Gnulemah, trembling to oppose the man she loved, yet by love compelled to do so.

Balder paused, and looked towards the bed.  There was a flickering smile on Manetho’s face; he seemed to be reviving.  His injuries were perhaps not fatal after all.  Should he recover, he must sooner or later receive his so-called punishment; meanwhile, Balder was inclined to regard himself as the chosen minister of Divine justice.  Why not speak now?