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 .
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