Unorna stood still and an awful light of evil came into her face.  A thought of which the enormity would have terrified a common being had entered her mind and taken possession of it.  Beatrice was in her power.  Beatrice should die in mortal sin, and her soul would be lost for ever.

For a long time she did not move, but stood looking down at the calm and lovely face of her sleeping enemy, devising a crime to be imposed upon her for her eternal destruction.  Unorna was very superstitious, or the hideous scheme could never have presented itself to her.  To her mind the deed was everything, whatever it was to be, and the intention or the unconsciousness in doing it could have nothing to do with the consequences to the soul of the doer.  She made no theological distinctions.  Beatrice should commit some terrible crime and should die in committing it.  Then she would be lost, and devils would do in hell the worst torment which Unorna could not do on earth.  A crime—­a robbery, a murder—­it must be done in the convent.  Unorna hesitated, bending her brows and poring in imagination over the dark catalogue of all imaginable evil.

A momentary and vague terror cast its shadow on her thoughts.  By some accident of connection between two ideas, her mind went back a month, and reviewed as in a flash of light all that she had thought and done since that day.  She had greatly changed since then.  She could think calmly now of deeds which even she would not have dared then.  She thought of the evening when she had cried aloud that she would give her soul to know the Wanderer safe, of the quick answer that had followed, and of Keyork Arabian’s face.  Was he a devil, indeed, as she sometimes fancied, and had there been a reality and a binding meaning in that contract?

Keyork Arabian!  He, indeed, possessed the key to all evil.  What would he have done with Beatrice?  Would he make her rob the church—­murder the abbess in her sleep?  Bad, but not bad enough.

Unorna started.  A deed suggested itself so hellish, so horrible in its enormity, so far beyond all conceivable human sin, that for one moment her brain reeled.  She shuddered again and again, and groped for support and leaned against the wall in a bodily weakness of terror.  For one moment she, who feared nothing, was shaken by fear from head to foot, her face turned white, her knees shook, her sight failed her, her teeth chattered, her lips moved hysterically.

But she was strong still.  The thing she had sought had come to her suddenly.  She set her teeth, and thought of it again and again, till she could face the horror of it without quaking.  Is there any limit to the hardening of the human heart?

The distant bells rang out the call to midnight prayer.  Unorna stopped and listened.  She had not known how quickly time was passing.  But it was better so.  She was glad it was so late, and she said so to herself, but the evil smile that was sometimes in her face was not there now.  She had thought a thought that left a mark on her forehead.  Was there any reality in that jesting contract with Keyork Arabian?