“It was his own wish,” she thought.

Did she not know, then, what she was doing when, wishing to place a living guard between herself and danger, she had descended to the kennel and unloosed the ferocious animals, which, recognizing her voice, had bounded about her and licked her hands with many manifestations of joy?  She had ascended again to her chamber and extinguished the light, around which fluttered the moths, beating the opal shade with their downy wings; and, in the darkness, drinking in the nightair at the open window, she had waited, saying to herself that Michel Menko would not come; but, if he did come, it was the will of fate that he should fall a victim to the devoted dogs which guarded her.

Why should she pity him?

She hated him, this Michel.  He had threatened her, and she had defended herself, that was all.  Ortog’s teeth were made for thieves and intruders.  No pity!  No, no—­no pity for such a coward, since he had dared—­

But yet, as the ferocious bayings of the dogs below became redoubled in their fury, she imagined, in terror, a crunching of bones and a tearing of flesh; and, as her imagination conjured up before her Michel fighting, in hideous agony, against the bites of the dogs, she shuddered; she was afraid, and again a stifled cry burst forth from her lips.  A sort of insanity took possession of her.  She tried to cry out for mercy as if the animals could hear her; she sought the door of her chamber, groping along the wall with her hands outspread before her, in order to descend the staircase and rush out into the garden; but her limbs gave way beneath her, and she sank an inert mass upon the carpet in an agony of fear and horror.

“My God!  My God!  It is a man they are devouring;” and her voice died away in a smothered call for help.

Then she suddenly raised her head, as if moved by an electric shock.

There was no more noise!  Nothing!  The black night had all at once returned to its great, mysterious silence.  Marsa experienced a sensation of seeing a pall stretched over a dead body.  And in the darkness there seemed to float large spots of blood.

“Ah! the unhappy man!” she faltered.

Then, again, the voices of the dogs broke forth, rapid, angry, still frightfully threatening.  The animals appeared now to be running, and their bayings became more and more distant.

What had happened?

One would have said that they were dragging away their prey, tearing it with hideous crimson fangs.

CHAPTER XVII

Marsa’s guardians.

Was Michel Menko indeed dead?  We left him just as he was turning the key in the little gate in the wall.  He walked in boldly, and followed a path leading to an open space where was the pavilion he had spoken of to Marsa.  He looked to see whether the windows of the pavilion were lighted, or whether there were a line of light under the door.  No:  the delicate tracery of the pagoda-like structure showed dimly against the sky; but there was no sign of life.  Perhaps, however, Marsa was there in the darkness.