Meanwhile Hamilton came back to his room with the Dictator. The Dictator looked fresh, bright, wide-awake, and ready for anything. He had grumbled a little on being roused, and was at first inclined rather peevishly to 'pooh-pooh' all suggestion of conspiracies and personal danger.

He even went so far as to say that, on the whole, he would rather prefer to be allowed to have his sleep out, even though it were to be concisely rounded off by his death. But he soon pulled himself together and got out of that perverse and sleepy mood, and by the time he and Hamilton had found Sarrasin, the Dictator was well up to all the duties of a commander-in-chief. He had a rapid review of the situation with Sarrasin.

'What I don't see,' he quietly said—he knew too well to try whispering—'is why I should not keep to my own room. If anything is going to happen I am well forewarned, and shall be well fore-armed, and I shall be pretty well able to take care of myself; and why should anyone else run any risk on my account?'

'It isn't on your account,' Sarrasin answered, a little bluntly.

'No? Well, I am glad to hear that. On whose account, then, may I ask?'

'On account of Gloria,' Sarrasin answered decisively. 'If Hamilton here is killed, or I am killed, it does not matter a straw so far as Gloria is concerned. But if you got killed, who, I want to know, is to go out to Gloria? Gloria would not rise for Hamilton or me.'

The Dictator could say nothing. He could only clasp in silence the hand of either man.

'They are putting out the lights downstairs,' Sarrasin said in a low tone. 'I had better get to my lair.'

'Have you got a revolver?' Hamilton asked.

'Never go without one, dear boy.' Then Sarrasin stole away with the noiseless tread of the Red Indian, whose comrade and whose enemy he had been so often.

Hamilton closed his door, but did not fasten it. The electric light still burned softly there.

'Will you smoke?' Hamilton asked. 'I smoke here every night, and Sarrasin too, mostly. It won't arouse any suspicion if the smoke gets about the corridor. I am often up much later than this. You need not answer, and then your voice can't be heard. Just take a cigar.'

The Dictator quietly nodded, and took two cigars, which he selected very carefully, and began to smoke.

'Do you know,' Ericson said, 'that to-morrow is my birthday? No—I mean it is already my birthday.'

'As if I didn't know,' Hamilton replied.

'Odd, if anything should happen.'

Then there was absolute silence in the room. Each man kept his thoughts to himself, and yet each knew well enough what the other was thinking of. Ericson was thinking, among other things, how, if there should really be some assassin-plot, what a trouble and a scandal and even a serious danger he should have brought upon the Langleys, who were so kind and sweet to him. He was thinking of Sarrasin, and of the danger the gallant veteran was running for a cause which, after all, was no cause of his. He could hardly as yet believe in the existence of the murder-plot; and still, with his own knowledge of the practices of former Governments in Gloria, he could not look upon the positive evidence of Sarrasin's telegram from across the Atlantic and the sudden suspicions of Dolores as insignificant. He knew well that one of the practices of former Governments in Gloria had been, when they wanted a dangerous enemy removed, to employ some educated and clever criminal already under conviction and sentence of death, and release him for the time with the promise that, if he should succeed in doing their work, means should be found to relieve him from his penalty altogether. When he became Dictator he had himself ordered the re-arrest of two such men who had had the audacity to return to the capital to claim their reward, under the impression that they should find their old friends still in power. He commuted the death punishment in their case, bad as they were, on the principle that they were the victims of a loathsome system, and that they were tempted into the new crime. But he left them to imprisonment for life. Ericson had a strong general objection to the infliction of capital punishment—to the punishment that is irreparable, that cannot be recalled. He was not actually an uncompromising opponent on moral grounds of the principle of capital punishment, but he would think long before sanctioning its infliction.

He was wondering, in an idle sort of way, whether he could remember the appearance or the name of either of these two men. He might perhaps remember the names; he did not believe he could recall the faces. Clearly the Dictator wanted that great gift which, according to popular tradition or belief, always belonged to the true leaders of men—the gift of remembering every face one ever has seen, and every name one has ever heard. Alexander had it, we are told, and Julius CÆsar, and Oliver Cromwell, and Claverhouse, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and Brigham Young. Napoleon, to be sure, worked it up, as we have lately come to know, by collusion with some of his officers; and it may be that Brigham Young was occasionally coached by devoted Elders at Salt Lake City. At all events, it would not appear that the Dictator either had the gift, or at present the means of being provided with any substitute for it. He could not remember the appearance of the men he had saved from execution. It is curious, however, how much of his time and his thoughts they had occupied or wasted while he was waiting for the first sound that might be expected to give the alarm.

Hamilton looked at his watch. The Dictator motioned to him, and Hamilton turned the face of the watch towards him. Half-past one o'clock Ericson saw. He looked tired. Hamilton made a motion towards his own bed which clearly signified, 'would you like to lie down for a little?' Ericson replied by a sign of assent, and presently he stretched himself half on the bed and half off—on the coverlet of the bed as to his head and shoulders, with his legs hanging over the side and his feet on the floor—and he thought again, about his birthday, and so he fell asleep.

Hamilton had often seen him fall asleep like this in the immediate presence of danger, but only when there was nothing that could immediately, and in the expected course of things, exact or even call for his personal attention or his immediate command. Now, however, Hamilton somewhat marvelled at the power of concentration which could enable his chief to give himself at once up to sleep with the knowledge that some sort of danger—purely personal danger—hung over him, the nature, the form, and the time of which were absolutely hidden in darkness. Very brave men, familiar with the perils and horrors of war, experienced duellists, intrepid explorers, seamen whose nerves are never shaken by the white squall of the Levant, or the storm in the Bay of Biscay, or the tempest round some of the most rugged coasts of Australia—such men are often turned white-livered by the threat of assassination—that terrible pestilence which walks abroad at night or in the dusk, and dogs remorselessly the footsteps of the victim. But Ericson slept composedly, and his deep, steady breathing seemed to tell pale-hearted fear it lied.

And other thoughts, too, came up into Hamilton's mind. He had long put away all wild hopes and dreams of Helena. He had utterly given her up; he had seen only too clearly which way her love was stretching its tentacula, and he had long since submitted himself to the knowledge that they did not stretch themselves out to grapple with the strings of his heart. He knew that Helena loved the Dictator. He bent to the knowledge; he was not sorry now any more. But he wondered if the Dictator in his iron course was sleeping quietly in the front of danger for him which must mean misery for her, and was thinking nothing about her. Surely he must know, by this time, that she loved him! Surely he must love her—that bright, gifted, generous, devoted girl? Was she, then, misprized by Ericson? Was the Dictator's heart so full of his own political and patriotic schemes and enterprises that he could not spare a thought, even in his dreams, for the girl who so adored him, and whom Hamilton had at one time so much adored? Did this stately tree never give a thought to the beautiful and fresh flower that drank the dew at its feet?

Suddenly Ericson turned on the bed, and from his sleeping lips came a murmuring cry—a low-voiced plaint, instinct with infinite love and yearning and pathos—and the only words then spoken were the words 'Helena, Helena!' And then the question of Hamilton's mind was answered, and Ericson shook himself free of sleep, and turned on the bed, and sat up and looked at Hamilton, and was clearly master of the situation.

'I have been sleeping,' he said, in the craftily-qualified tone of the experienced one who thoroughly understands the difference in a time of danger between the carefully subdued tone and the penetrating, sibilant whisper. 'Nothing has happened?'

Hamilton made a gesture of negation.

'It must come soon—if it is to come at all,' Ericson said. 'And it will come—I know it—I have had a dream.'

'You don't believe in dreams?' Hamilton murmured gently.

'I don't believe in all dreams, boy; I do believe in that dream.'

'Hush!' said Hamilton, holding up his hand.

Some faint, vague sounds were heard in the corridor. The Dictator and Hamilton remained absolutely motionless and silent.

The Duchess had disappeared into her room for a while, and called together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after her packing and her dresses. She had honestly got under the impression of late years that a woman could not be well looked after who had not three maids to go about with her and see to her wants. When first she settled down at Seagate Hall with her three attendant Graces, Helena was almost inclined to resent such an invasion as an insult. It would not have mattered, the girl said to her father, if it were at King's Langley, where were rooms enough for a squadron of maids; but here, at Seagate Hall, the accommodation of which was limited, what an extraordinary thing to do! Who ever heard of a woman going about with three maids? Sir Rupert, however, would not have a breath of murmur against the three maids, and the Duchess made herself so thoroughly agreeable and sympathetic in every other way that Helena soon forgot the infliction of the three maids. 'I only hope they are made quite comfortable,' she said to the dignified housekeeper.

'A good deal more comfortable, Miss, than they had any right to expect,' was the reply, and so all was settled.

This night, then, the Duchess summoned her maids around her and had her hair 'fixed,' as she would herself have expressed it, and then made up her mind to pay a visit to Helena. She had become really quite fond of Helena—all the more because she felt sure that the girl had a love-secret—and wished very much that Helena would take her into confidence.

The Duchess appeared in Helena's room draped in a lovely dressing-gown and wearing slippers with be-diamonded buckles. The Duchess evidently was ready for a long dressing-gown talk. She liked to contemplate herself in one of her new Parisian dressing-gowns, and she was quite willing to give Helena her share in the gratification of the sight. But Helena's thoughts were hopelessly away from dressing-gowns, even from her own. She became aware after a while that the Duchess was giving her a history of some marvellous new dresses she had brought from Paris, and which were to be displayed lavishly during the short time left of the London season, and at Goodwood, and afterwards at various country-houses.

'You're sleepy, child,' the Duchess suddenly said, 'and I am keeping you up with my talk.'

'No, indeed, Duchess, I am not in the least sleepy, and it's very kind of you to come and talk to me.'

'Well, if you ain't sleepy you are sorrowful, or something like it. So your Dictator is going to try his luck again! Well, clear, I just wish you and I could help some. By the way, don't you take my countrymen here as just our very best specimens of Americans.'

'I hadn't much noticed,' Helena said listlessly. 'They seemed very quiet men.'

'Meaning that American men in general are rather noisy and self-assertive?' the Duchess said with a smile.

'Oh, no, Duchess, I never meant anything of the kind. But they do seem very quiet, don't they?'

'Stupid, I should say,' was the comment of the Duchess. 'I didn't talk much with Mr. Copping, but I had a little talk with Professor Flick. I am afraid, by the way, he thinks me very stupid, for I appear to have got him mixed up in my mind with somebody quite different, and you know it vexes anybody to be mistaken for anybody else. I meant to ask him what State he hailed from, but I quite forgot. His accent didn't seem quite familiar to me somehow. I wish I had thought of asking him.' The Duchess seemed so much in earnest about the matter that Helena felt inspired to say, by way of consoling her:

'Dear Duchess, you can ask him the important question to-morrow. I dare say he will not be offended.'

'Well, now that's just what I have been thinking about, dear child. You see, I have already put my foot in it.'

'Won't do much harm,' Helena said smiling—'foot is too small.'

'Come now, that's very prettily said;' and the gratified Duchess stretched out half-unconsciously a very small and pretty foot, cased in an exquisite shoe and stocking, and then drew it in again, as if thinking that she must not seem to be personally vindicating Helena's compliment. 'But he might be offended, perhaps, if I were to convey the idea that I knew nothing at all of him or his place of birth. Well—good night, child; we shall meet him anyhow to-morrow.' She kissed Helena and left the room.

When the Duchess had gone, Helena sat in her bedroom, broad awake. She had got her hair arranged and put on a dressing-gown, and sent her maid to bed long before, and now she took up a book and tried to read it, and now and then put it wearily down upon her lap, and then took it up again and read a page or two more, and then put it away again, and went back to think over things. What was she thinking about? Mostly, if not altogether, of the few words the Dictator had spoken to her—the words that told her he must cut short his visit to Seagate Hall. She knew quite well what that meant. It meant, of course, that he was going out to fling himself upon the shore of Gloria, and that he might never come back. He might have miscalculated the strength of his following in Gloria—and then it was all but certain that he must die for his mistake. Or he might have calculated wisely—and then he would be welcomed back to the Dictatorship of Gloria, and then he would—oh! she was sure he would—drive back the invaders from the frontier, and she would be proud, oh! so proud, of that! But then he would remain in Gloria, and devote himself to Gloria, and come back to England no more. How women have to suffer for a political cause! Not merely the mothers and wives and sisters who have to see their loved ones go to the prison or the scaffold for some political question which they regard, from their domestic point of view, as a pure nuisance and curse because it takes the loved one from them. Oh! but there is more than that, worse than that, when a woman is willing to be devoted to the cause, but finds her heart torn with agony by the thought that her lover cares more for the cause than he cares for her—that for the sake of the cause he could live without her, and even could forget her!

This was what Helena was thinking of this night, as she outwatched the stars, and knew by his tale half-told that the Dictator would soon be leaving her, in all probability for ever. He was not her lover in any sense. He had never made love to her. He had never even taken seriously her innocently bold advances towards him. He had taken them as the sweet and kindly advances of a girl who out of her generosity of heart was striving to make the course of life pleasant for a banished man with a ruined career. Helena saw all this with brave impartial eyes. She had judged rightly up to a certain point; but she did not see, she could not see, she could not be expected to see, how a time came about when the Dictator had begun to be afraid of the part he was playing—of the time when the Dictator grew acquainted with his heart, and searched what stirred it so—according to the tender and lovely words of Beaumont and Fletcher—and, alas! had found it love. Strange that these two hearts so thoroughly affined should be so misjudging each of the other! It was like the story told in Uhland's touching poem, which probably no one reads now, even in Uhland's own Germany, about the youth who is leaving his native town for ever, accompanied by the geleit—the escort, the 'send-off'—of his companion-students, and who looks back to the window which the maiden has just opened and thinks, 'If she had but loved me!' and a tear comes into the girl's deep blue eye, and she closes her window, hopeless, and thinks, 'If he had but loved me!'

'And now he is going!' thought Helena. And at that hour Ericson was waking up, aroused from sleep by the sound of his own softly-breathed word 'Helena!'

'It is now his birthday,' she thought.

Soame Rivers was not in his character very like Hamlet. But of course there is that one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin, and the touch of nature that made Hamlet and Soame Rivers kin to-night was found in the fact that on this night, as on a memorable night of Hamlet's career, in his heart there was 'a kind of fighting' that would not let him sleep. He sat up fully dressed. The one thing present to his mind was the thought that, if anything whatever should happen to the Dictator—and the more the night grew later, the more the possibility seemed to enlarge upon him—the ruin of all Soame Rivers's career seemed certain. Inquiry would assuredly be made into the exact hour when the telegram was sent from the Foreign Office and when it was received at Sir Rupert Langley's, and it would be known that Rivers had that telegram for hours in his hands without telling anyone about it. It was easy in the light and the talk of the dining-room and the billiard-room to tell one's self that there could be no possible danger threatening anyone in an English gentleman's country-house. But now, in the deep of the night, in the loneliness, with the knowledge of what Sarrasin had said, all looked so different. It was easy at that earlier and brighter and more self-confident hour to crumple up a telegram and make nothing of it; but now Soame Rivers could only curse himself for his levity and his folly. What would Helena Langley say to him?

Was there anything he could do to retrieve his position? Only one thing occurred to him. He could go and hide himself somewhere in shade or in darkness near the Dictator's door. If any attempt at assassination should be made, he might be in advance of Sarrasin and Hamilton. If nothing should happen, he at least would be found at his self-ordained post of watchfulness by Hamilton and Sarrasin, and they would report of him to Sir Rupert—and to Helena.

This seemed the best stroke of policy for him. He threw off his smoking-coat and put on a small, tight, closely-buttoned jacket, which in any kind of struggle, if such there were to be, would leave no flapping folds for an antagonist to cling to. Rivers was well-skilled in boxing and in all manner of manly exercises; he took care to be a master in his way of every art a smart young Englishman ought to possess, and he began to think with a sickening revulsion of horror that in keeping back the telegram he had been doing just the thing which would shut him out from the society of English gentlemen for ever. A powerful impulse was on him that he must redeem himself, not merely in the eyes of others—others, perhaps, might never know of his momentary lapse—but in his own eyes. At that moment he would have braved any danger, not merely to save the Dictator, but simply to show that he had striven to save the Dictator. It flashed across his mind that he might even still make himself a sort of second-best hero—in the eyes of Helena Langley.

He thought he heard a stirring somewhere in one of the corridors. He put on a pair of tight-fitting noiseless velvet slippers, and he glided out of his room and turned into the corridor where the Dictator slept. Yes, there surely was a sound in that direction. Rivers crept swiftly and stealthily on.

Soame Rivers belonged to his age and his society. He was born of Cynicism and of Introspection. It would have interested him quite as much to find out himself as to find out any other person. While he was moving along in the darkness it occurred to him to remember that he did not know in the least whither, to what rescue, to what danger, he was steering. He might, for aught he knew, have to grapple with assassins. The whole thing might prove to be a false alarm, an absurd scare, and then he, who based his whole life and his whole reputation on the theory that nothing ever could induce him to make himself ridiculous or to become bad form, might turn out to be the ludicrous hero of a country-house 'booby-trap.' To do him justice, he feared this result much more than the other. But he wanted to test himself—to find himself out. All this thinking had not as yet delayed his movements by a single step, but now he paused for one short second, and he felt his pulse. It beat steadily, regularly as the notes of Big Ben at Westminster. 'Come,' he breathed to himself, 'I am all right. Come what will, I know I am not a coward!'

For there had come into Rivers's somewhat emasculated mind now and again the doubt whether his father, Cynicism, and his mother, Introspection, might not, between them, have entailed some cowardice on him. He felt relieved, encouraged, satisfied, by the test of his pulse. 'Come,' he thought to himself, 'if there is anything really to be done, Helena shall praise me to-morrow.' So he stole his quiet way.

Sarrasin had made himself acquainted with the Dictator's habits—and he at once installed himself in bed. He took off his outer clothing, his coat and waistcoat, kicked off his dress-shoes, and keeping on his trousers he settled himself down among the bed-clothes. He left his coat and waistcoat and shoes ostentatiously lying about. If there was to be a murderous attack, his idea was to invite, not to discourage, that murderous attack, and certainly not by any means to scare it away. Any indication of preparedness or wakefulness or activity could only have the effect of giving warning to the assassin, and so putting off the attempt at the crime. The old soldier felt sure that the attempt could never be made under conditions so favourable to his side of the controversy as at the present moment. 'We have got it here,' he said to himself, 'we can't tell where it may break out next.'

He turned off the electric light. The button was so near his hand that it would not take him a second to turn the light on again whenever he should have need of it. His purpose was to get the assassin or assassins as far as possible into the room and close to the bed. He was determined not to admit that he had thrown off sleep until the very last moment, and then to flash the electric light at once. He would leave no chance whatever for any explanation or apology about a mistake in the room or anything of that kind. Before he would consent to open his eyes fully he must have indisputable evidence of the murderous plot. Once for all!

Sarrasin kept his watch under his pillow, safe within reach. He wanted to be sure of the exact minute when everything was to occur. He fancied he heard some faint moving in the corridor, and he turned on the electric light and gave one glance at his watch, and then summoned darkness again. He found that it was exactly two o'clock. Now, he thought, if anything is going to be done, it must be done very soon; we can't have long to wait. He was glad. The most practised and case-hardened soldier is not fond of having to wait for his enemy.

Sarrasin had left his door—Ericson's door—unlocked and unbarred. Everybody who knew the Dictator intimately knew that he had a sort of tic for leaving his doors open. Sarrasin knew this; but, besides, he was anxious, as has been already said, to draw the assassin-plot, if such plot there were, into him, not to bar it out and keep it on the other side. Now the way was clear for the enemy. Sarrasin lay low and listened. Yes, there was undoubtedly the sound of feet in the corridor. It was the sound of one pair of feet, Sarrasin felt certain. He had not campaigned with Red Shirt and his Sioux for nothing; he could distinguish between two sounds and four sounds. 'Come, this is going to be an easy job,' he thought to himself. 'I am not much afraid of any one man who is likely to turn up. Bring along your bears.' The old soldier chuckled to himself; he was getting to be rather amused with the whole proceeding. He lay down, and even in the lightness of his plucky heart indulged in simulation of deep breathings intended to convey to the possibly coming assassin that the victim was fast asleep, and merely waiting to be killed off conveniently without trouble to anybody, even to himself. He was a little, just a little, sorry that Mrs. Sarrasin could not be present to see how well he could manage the job. But her presence would not be practicable, and she would be sure to believe that he had borne himself well under whatever difficulty and danger. So perhaps he breathed the name of his lady-love, as good knights did in the days to which he and his lady-love ought to have belonged; and then he committed his soul to his Creator.

The subtle sound came near the door. The door was gently tried—opened with a soft dexterity and suppleness of touch which much impressed the sham sleeper in the bed. 'No heavy British hand there,' Sarrasin thought, recalling his many memories of many lands and races. He lay with his right arm thrown carelessly over the coverlets, and his left arm hidden. Given any assassin who is not of superlative quality, he will be on his guard as to the disclosed right arm, and will not trouble himself about the hidden left. The door opened. Somebody came gliding in. The somebody was breathing too heavily. 'A poor show of an assassin,' Sarrasin could not help thinking. His nerves were now all abrace like the finest steel, and he could observe a dozen things in a second of time. 'If I couldn't do without puffing like that, I'd never join the assassin trade!' Then a crouching figure came to the bedside and looked over him, and took note, as he had expected, of the outstretched right arm, and stooped over it, and ranged beyond it and kept out of its reach, and then lifted a knife; and then Sarrasin let out a terrible left-hander just under the assassin's chin, and the assassin tumbled over like a heavy lump on the carpet of the floor, and Sarrasin quietly leaped out of bed and took the knife out of his palsied hand and gently turned on the light.

'Let's have a look at you,' he said, and he turned the fallen man over. In the meanwhile he had thrust the knife under the pillow, and he held the revolver comfortably ready at the forehead of the reviving murderer. He studied his face. 'Hello,' he quietly said, 'so it is you!'

Yes, it was the wretched Saffron Hill Sicilian of St. James's Park.

The Sicilian was opening his eyes and beginning vaguely to form a faint idea of how things had been going.

'Why, you poor pitiful trash!' Sarrasin murmured under his breath, 'is this the whole business? Are you and your ladies' slipper knife going to run this whole machine? I don't believe a bit of it. Look here; tell us your whole infernal plot, or I'll blow your brains out—at least as many as you have, which don't amount to much. Do you feel that?'

He pressed the barrel of his revolver hard on to the Sicilian's forehead. Under other conditions it might have felt cool and refreshing. The touch was cool and refreshing certainly. But the Sicilian, even in his bewildered condition, readily recognised the fact that the cool touch of the iron was evidently to be followed by a distressing explosion, and he could only whine feebly for mercy.

For a second or two Sarrasin was fairly puzzled what to do. It would be no trouble to him to drive or drag this wretched Sicilian into the room where Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at assassination—was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of Orizaba could do? 'Out of the question,' Sarrasin thought.

'I think I had better finish you off,' he said to the Sicilian, speaking in a low, bland tone, subdued as that of a gentle evening breeze. 'Nobody really wants you any more. I don't care to rouse the house by using my revolver for a creature like you. Just come this way,' and he dragged him with remorseless hand towards the bed. 'I want to get at your own knife. That will do the business nicely.'

Honest Sarrasin had not the faintest idea of becoming executioner in cold blood of the hired Sicilian stabber. It was important to him to see how far the Sicilian stabber's stabbing courage would hold out—whether there were stronger men behind him who could be grappled with in their turn. He still held to his conviction, 'We haven't got the whole plot out yet. Anybody could do this sort of thing.'

'Don't kill me!' faintly murmured the wretched assassin.

'Why not? Just tell me all, or I'll kill you in two seconds,' Sarrasin answered, in the same calm low voice, and, gripping the Sicilian solidly round the waist, he trailed him towards the bed, where the knife was.

Then there came a flare and splash and blaze of yellowish red light across the eyes of Sarrasin and his captive, and in a moment a noise as fierce as if all the artillery of Heaven—or the lower deep—were let loose at once. No words could describe the devastating influence of that explosion on the ears and the nerves and the hearts of those for whom it first broke. Utter silence—that is, the suspension of all faculty of hearing or feeling or thinking—succeeded for the moment. Sight and sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre, by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered and the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming light of the morning—the electric light had been driven out—that he was still gripping on to the body of the Sicilian, and that half the wretched Sicilian's head had been blown away. Then everything was once more extinguished for him.

But in that one moment of reviving consciousness he contrived to keep his wits well about him. 'It was not the Sicilian who did that,' he said to himself doggedly.