PERSIS watched him come, and did not move. It was unbelievable that disaster should fall to such as her from such as him in such a way. He was evidently only playing a part to frighten her.

She blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette and fanned it away with leisure, and smiled.

"You'd look well, now, wouldn't you, if one of the servants came in?"

She laughed at the picture.

"You're laughing at me again!" he groaned. "You're always laughing at me. But you won't feel so funny with this knife in you."

She saw now that he was not fooling. But she despised him for his effort to prove his bravery by a cowardice, and she eyed him with a marble calm worthy of a nobler cause and a better reward.

"Sit down, Willie, and don't threaten me. You don't frighten me at all. But you may alarm some of the servants and give them more of that gossip you have harped on so much."

Her obstinate pluck bewildered him, but he lowered his voice as he commented to some imaginary spectator: "My God! she has no higher thought than that! Even now when death stares her in the face!" Then he had a fanatic's mercy for her. "Why aren't you saying your prayers, you fool?"

She answered him with all the authority she could command:

"Put down that knife! Put it down, I say! You know I could save myself from any danger by raising my voice. And you know I'd rather die than bring the servants in on such a scene."

"A scene!" he shrieked. "A scene! Why, woman, I'm going to kill you. Don't you understand anything? You've only got a minute more to live. Say your prayers! Damn you! say your prayers!"

There was an insanity in his look that frightened her at last. She tried persuasion now, and her voice was soft and caressing.

"Gently, Willie; gently now, I beg you. You're not yourself, you know. You must control yourself. Please!—as a favor to me."

It was the wrong word. It maddened him, and he snarled: "As a favor to you? You dare ask favors of me? Go ask 'em of the man you've given favors to! The man? The men!"

And this was sacrilege to her one love. Her lip curled in angry contempt, and she turned from him in loathing, muttering:

"You dirty little beast!"

It was his muscles rather than his mind that did it. While his mind was recoiling from the insult his arm had struck out, and the knife had slid deep in the snow of her half-averted left breast; through the petal of a rose, and the satin gown, and the deep white flesh beneath it, and on into the wall of her struggling heart.

The blow and her effort to escape flung her backward, but the heavy chair held her. Before she could remember a wild scream broke from her lips.

As Enslee fell back his hand withdrew the knife. It came out all red. He gaped at it and shuddered, and it fell with a little clatter on the marble floor, flinging a few crimson drops on the black-and-white.

The noise startled him, and he retreated from her, clinging to the edge of the table. He felt queasy, and pushed back till he felt his chair and dropped into it—still staring at her and wondering, and she wondering at him.

It seemed a long time before her cry brought any response. Chedsey was in the cellar with Crofts and heard no sound, but Roake was in the pantry. He paused a moment, not trusting his ears, then he pushed the door open slightly and peered through. Other servants came crowding into the pantry whispering and jostling. He motioned them back.

His master and mistress were in their places. Mrs. Enslee looked pale and was lying back in her chair. He slipped through the door and spoke timidly:

"Beg pardon, ma'am; but did you call?"

Persis, at the sound of the door, finding her fan still in her hand, had instantly spread it across her wound. And her first impulse was to deny.

"No," she answered; then quickly: "Yes, I—I am ill—a little—suddenly. Telephone for Doctor—Doctor—the nearest doctor. You'd better run."

He turned to obey, but paused to ask:

"Isn't there anything I can do first, ma'am?"

"No, go! Go!" she fluttered.

"Sha'n't I send some one else while I am gone, ma'am?"

"No, no; keep them all away, all of them, till I ring."

Roake, with a face like ashes, still waited, staring.

"But, ma'am, you are hurt! You are bleeding!"

"Nonsense!" she stormed. "I spilled some claret on my fan. The doctor! Will you never go?" And he ran out through the jumble of servants, ordering them back to their stations.

And then Nichette came stumbling through the golden portal. She had heard the cry above, and had understood the pain and terror in it, and had run pell-mell down the great stairs, her hand whistling on the marble balustrade.

She paused now, clinging to one of the red curtains, and stammering:

"Madame, Madame! qu'y a-t-il? qu'avez-vous?"

Persis turned her head dolefully toward the face so wild with anxiety for her sake, and murmured, with a smile of affection and a tender form of speech:

"C'est toi, Nichette? Ce n'est rien, mais—mais"—A shiver ran through her. "Je sentis des frissons. Va faire mon lit. Je me vais coucher."

Nichette came forward unconvinced or to help her, but she motioned her off with a frantic hand, crying impatiently, "DÉpÊche-toi! veux-tu te dÉpÊcher!"

And Nichette, mutinously obedient, ran away, leaving Persis shivering indeed with a chill.

And now husband and wife were alone once more. And Willie could only stare and murmur, vacuously:

"What have I done? What have I done?"

"You've killed me, that's all," she answered, with a curious amusement. "It was such a funny thing for you to do, so old-fashioned."

There is a strange fact about wounds in the heart. If they are not so deep that they flood the lungs and smother out life they inspire a wild desire to talk, a fluttering garrulity.

So Persis, now, with that madly stitching shuttle in her breast, and that red seepage from her side, had unnumbered things to say. She chattered desperately, disjointedly:

"Oh, I suppose it had to come. It's what I get for trying to run things my own way. And now the tango-shop's closed up. But it's so funny that you should be the one to—and with a knife! You didn't mar my face, anyway. I thank you for that much. I'd hate to have my face hidden at the funeral. I should hate to make an ugly cor—"

Her lips refused the awful word as a thing unclean, abominable. Her body and all the voluptuous company of her senses felt panic-stricken at the thought of dissolution. She moaned and struggled with her chair.

"No, no, not that! What have I to do with death? I'm not ready to die. I'm not ready to die."

Willie got up and ran to her left side, but shrank back from what was there, and moved cautiously round on the slippery floor, crying: "You're too beautiful to die, too beautiful! You'll not die! The doctors will save you!"

"They must come very soon, then," Persis said, "for I'm bleeding—oh, so fast." She looked down along her side and complained: "See, my gown is quite ruined. And it was such a pretty gown. I'm afraid of my blood. How it gushes! Will it never stop? And it hurts! Willie, it hurts!"

In a long writhe of pain she gathered the table-cloth about her left side as if to stanch its flow. There was a rattle of falling glasses and a chink of tumbled silver as she moaned: "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" And she turned her head this way and that, panting as one pursued, bewildered, utterly at a loss. "Oh, what shall I do? I don't want to die. It's an awful thing to die—just now of all times, with no chance to make good the wrong I've done."

"You can't die; I won't let you die. You're too beautiful to die," Willie protested, and then turned to pleading: "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to strike you, Persis, at all. It was just my hand. It wasn't me that stabbed you, Persis. I couldn't hurt you, Persis."

"Oh, that's all right, Willie. I understand. I understand things better now, with so few minutes more to live. It is you that must forgive me. I haven't been a good wife to you, Willie. And he—he, of all men!—said I wasn't worth fighting for! Faithless to you—faithless to him! But oh, God knows, most faithless to myself. And now I must die for it."

"You are too beautiful to die! I won't let you die! You can't die!"

"But I must, boy. Don't hate me too much. I didn't mean to harm you. Some day—long after—you'll forgive me, won't you?"

"Oh, if you only won't die I'll forgive you anything."

"That's awfully nice of you, Willie," she said, with almost a smile. "I wonder if God will be as polite? They—they usually pray for dying people, don't they? I'm afraid they'll never get a doctor in time, to say nothing of a preacher. So you'd better pray for me, Willie."

The idea was so ridiculously tragic that she laughed; but he would not so far surrender her as to pray. He sobbed:

"You've got to live! I don't know a single prayer. You mustn't die, I tell you. You've got to live!" And he wept his little heart out as he knelt at her side, and, clinging to her hand, mumbled it with kisses.

She wept, too; moaned, and dreaded the black Beyond, which she must voyage prayerless. Still she must talk. From her silence came a frail, thin voice like a far-off cry.

"It's growing very dark, Willie—very dark! And I'm drifting, I wonder where? Can you hear my voice away off there? Better throw me a kiss, and wish me bon voyage! for this—is the last—of Persis. Poor Persis!"

Something of old habit reminded her of the gossip that would break into storm at her death. This spurred her heart to strive again. She clutched at the table and at Willie's arm and shoulder, and held herself erect as with claws, while she babbled:

"Willie, Willie, I've just thought. They'll try you for—for murder. The newspapers—the newspapers! Oh, my poor father! And they'll put you in jail! That mustn't happen to you—not to one of your family!—not through me!—no—no, it just mustn't! You must run—run—run!"

Enslee shivered at the future, and would have fled if he could have found the strength to rise from his knees.

And then the swinging door puffed softly, sardonically, and on the tapestries Tristram and Isoud looked at each other and then at her and shook their heads in pity.

Crofts, who had neither heard nor been told, came in with that eminent champagne in a dingy and ancient bottle.

He went behind the screen to untwist the wires and rub away the spider-webs. Then he came forward toward Willie's place to pour the first few drops there, according to the rite, before he filled Persis' glass. He had eased out the cork, and the soul of the wine was frothing forth into the swathing cloth when he blinked at the empty chair; then his eyes went across to Persis. He stared at her in mute amazement. She stared at him. She beckoned.

He put the bottle on the table and shuffled toward her.

She motioned him nearer with a limp and tremulous hand, and he bent down to hear her tiny voice.

"Crofts, come closer—listen to me—do you hear?" He nodded. "Perfectly?" He nodded, wringing his dry old hands.

"Well," she began, "I must tell you—and you must remember. Mr. Enslee and I had a—a little quarrel—and I—I lost my temper—you know—and seized the knife and—and stabbed myself."

The old man did nothing unbecoming to his caste, but he stood doddering and longed to die in place of that beautiful youth. She beckoned him nearer again, and spoke in a strangled voice: "Remember, I did it—myself! Re-mem—"

Her head fell forward, her exquisite chin rested in her bosom. Her body collapsed upon itself, and only the arms of the chair and the table kept it from rolling out on the floor.

But as if even this last ugliness of attitude were intolerable to her, she fought against the chair and the table, and pushed and slid backward till her head was erect. And she was whispering courage to herself, hoarsely:

"Come—come—Persis!"

She seemed to be trying to die like a thoroughbred, a good loser.

And then her head rolled back in the billows of her hair, with the jeweled crown pointing downward and her eyes staring upward. Her wan, pouting, parted lips and the long arch of her perfect throat were themselves a prayer for mercy, offering up beauty as its own undoing and its own excuse.

She was dead.