“When did you come back from the fair?” cried the girl shrilly, “I lost you there, you know-and you man-aged to lose me—­but I have waited!—­waited patiently for news of you! . . . and when none came, I still waited, making myself beautiful! . . . see!—­” And she thrust her fingers through her long hair, throwing it about in wilder disorder than ever.  “You thought you had killed me—­and you were glad!—­it makes all men glad to kill women when they can!  But I—­I was not killed so easily,—­I have lived!—­for this night—­just for this night!  Listen!” and she sprang forward and threw herself violently against his breast, “Do you love me now?  Tell me again—­as you told me at the fair—­you love me?”

He staggered under her weight—­and tried for a moment to thrust her back, but she held him in a grip of iron, looking up at him with her great feverish dark eyes, and grasping his shoulders with thin burning hands.  He trembled;—­he was beginning to grow horribly afraid.  What devil had sent this woman whom he had ruined so long as two years ago, across his path to-night?  Would it be possible to soothe her?

“Marguerite—­” he began.

“Yes, yes, Marguerite!  Say it again!” she cried wildly, “Marguerite!  Say it again!  Sweet—­sweet and tenderly as you said it then!  Poor Marguerite!  Your pale ugly face seemed the face of a god to her once, because she thought you loved her—­we all find men so beautiful when we think they love us!  Yes—­your cold eyes and cruel lips and hard brow!—­it was quite a different face at the fair!  So was mine a different face—­but you!—­You have made mine what it is now!—­look at it!  What!—­you thought you could murder a woman and never be found out!  You thought you could kill poor Marguerite, and that no one would ever know—­”

“Hush, hush!” said Cazeau, his teeth chattering with the cold of his inward terror, “I never killed you, Marguerite!—­I loved you—­yes, listen!” For she was looking up at him with an attentive, almost sane expression in her eyes.  “I meant to write to you after the fair,—­and come to you . . .”

“Hush, hush!” said the girl, “Let me hear this!—­this is strange news!  He meant to write to me—­yet he let me die by inches in an agony of waiting!—­till I dropped into the darkness where I am now!  He meant to come to me—­oh, it was very easy to come if he had chosen to come,—­before I wandered away into all this strangeness—­ this shadow—­this confusion and fire!  But you see, it is too late now,” and she began to laugh again, “Too late!  I have a strange idea that I am dead, though I seem alive—­I am in my grave; and so you must die also and be buried with me!  Yes, you must certainly die!—­ when one is cruel and false and treacherous one is not wanted in the world!—­better to go out of it—­and it is quite easy,—­see!—­this way!—­”

And before he realised her intention she sprang back a step—­then drew a knife from her bosom, and with a sort of exultant shriek, stabbed him furiously once—­twice—­thrice . . . crying out—­“This for your lie!  This for my sorrow!—­This for your love!—­”