He paused, startled at the turn his own thoughts were taking.

“Of what?  Let me try and express to myself now what I could not express or realize last night.  She—­Ziska—­I thought was mine,—­ mine from her dimpled feet to her dusky hair,—­and she danced for me alone.  It seemed that the jewels she wore upon her rounded arms and slender ankles were all love-gifts from me—­every circlet of gold, every starry, shining gem on her fair body was the symbol of some secret joy between us—­joy so keen as to be almost pain.  And as she danced, I thought I was in a vast hall of a majestic palace, where open colonnades revealed wide glimpses of a burning desert and deep blue sky.  I heard the distant sound of rolling drums, and not far off I saw the Sphinx—­a creature not old but new—­resting upon a giant pedestal and guarding the sculptured gate of some great temple which contained, as I then thought, all the treasures of the world.  I could paint the picture as I saw it then!  It was a fleeting impression merely, conjured up by the dance that dizzied my brain.  And that song of the Lotus-lily!  That was strange—­very strange, for I thought I had heard it often before,—­and I saw myself in the vague dream, a prince, a warrior, almost a king, and far more famous in the world than I am now!”

He looked about him uneasily, with a kind of nervous terror, and his eyes rested for a moment on the easel where the picture he had painted of the Princess was placed, covered from view by a fold of dark cloth.

“Bah!” he exclaimed at last with a forced laugh, “What stupid fancies fool me!  It is all the vague talk of that would-be learned ass, Dr. Dean, with his ridiculous theories about life and death.  I shall be imagining I am his fad, Araxes, next!  This sort of thing will never do.  Let me reason out the matter calmly.  I love this woman,—­love her to absolute madness.  It is not the best kind of love, maybe, but it is the only kind I am capable of, and such as it is, she possesses it all.  What then?  Well!  We go to-morrow to the Pyramids, and we join her at the Mena House, I and the poor boy Denzil.  He will try his chance—­I mine.  If he wins, I shall kill him as surely as I myself live,—­yes, even though he is Helen’s brother.  No man shall snatch Ziska from my arms and continue to breathe.  If I win, it is possible he may kill me, and I shall respect him for trying to do it.  But I shall satisfy my love first; Ziska will be mine—­mine in every sense of possession,—­before I die.  Yes, that must be—­that will have to be.  And afterwards,—­why let Denzil do his worst; a man can but die once.”

He drew the cloth off his easel and stared at the strange picture of the Princess, which seemed almost sentient in its half-watchful, half-mocking expression.

“There is a dead face and a living one on this canvas,” he said, “and the dead face seems to enthral me as much as the living.  Both have the same cruel smile,—­both the same compelling magnetism of eye.  Only it is a singular thing that I should know the dead face even more intimately than the living—­that the tortured look upon it should be a kind of haunting memory—­horrible—­ghastly. ...”