He was standing thus, looking in mere absence of mind, when a footfall beyond the screen reached his ear.

“Oh Lord!” he cried.

It was she.  As his eyes fell upon her she was letting fall her long cloak.  It lay on the floor about her feet, and she towered over it, in superb scarlet.  Against her background of shadow her neck and arms and the abundance of her breast shone like silver.  Ere he could go to her she waved him away with a sweep of a naked arm.  A hand was on her hip, and she moved towards the bed with the sliding gait of the Spanish dancer.

It was an affair of an instant.  Buscarlet and Truelove hastened upon his exclamation, and Buscarlet, stumbling, brushed against the screen.  He caught at it to save it from falling, and the bed was bare to the room.  Regnault and his wife looked into each other’s face.  She, undisturbed by the suddenness of it all, held yet her posture of the stage, glowing in her silk with something dangerous and ominous about her, something blatant and yet potent, like a knife in a stocking.  It was as though she wrought in violence for the admiration of the man on the bed.  He, on his elbow, turned to her a thin face with lips parted and trembling; for an intolerable instant they hung, mute and motionless.  Then, slowly, she turned with one foot sliding, and the light of the lamp was full on her face.

It seemed to break the tense spell; Regnault’s face was writhing; of a sudden he burst into shrill, hideous laughter, and his right hand flung out and pointed at her.  None moved; none could.  His laugh rang and broke, and rang again, outrageous and uncontrollable, merry and hearty and hateful.  The woman, at the first peal of it, started and stood as though stricken to stone; they could see her shrivel under the blast of it, shrivel and shrink and age.

Then, as though it had been overdue and long awaited, the laugh checked and choked.  It freed them from the thrall that held them.  Regnault’s head fell back.

“The amyl!” cried O’Neill, and they were all about him.  “The amyl—­ where is it?”

Regnault’s face was a mask of paralyzed pain; but the silver patch-box that held the capsules was not on the table.  It took a minute to find it on the floor.  O’Neill smashed a couple, and thrust his hand into the waxen face—­and waited.  Buscarlet was breathing like a man in a nightmare.  Truelove stood to attention.  But Regnault did not return to the shape of life.

O’Neill let his hand drop, and turned to Truelove.  “He’s got it,” he said; “But fetch a doctor.”

His eyes fell on the dancer in her shimmering scarlet, where she knelt at the bedside, with her head bowed to the counterpane and her hands clasped over it.

He sighed.  He did not understand.

X

THE POOR IN HEART

It was his habit of an evening to play the flute; and he was playing it faithfully, with the score propped up against a pile of books on his table, when the noises from the street reached him, and interrupted his music.  With the silver-dotted flute in his hand he moved to the window and put aside the curtains to look out.