She stumbled on through the narrow ways.

After a little s.p.a.ce they widened, and the lights multiplied, and through the rushing rains she saw the gay cas.e.m.e.nts of the houses of pleasure.

On the gust of wind there came a breath of fragrance from a root of autumn blossom in a balcony. The old fresh woodland smell smote her as with a blow; the people in the street looked after her.

"She is mad," they said to one another, and went onward.

She came to a broad place, which even in that night of storm was still a blaze of fire, and seemed to her to laugh through all its marble mask, and all its million eyes of golden light. A cruel laugh which mocked and said,--

"The seven chords of the lyre; who listens, who cares, who has ears to hear? But the rod of wealth all women kiss, and to its rule all men crawl; forever. You dreamt to give him immortality?--fool! Give him gold--give him gold! We are Christians here: and we have but one G.o.d."

Under one of the burning cressets of flame there was a slab of stone on which were piled, bedded in leaves, all red and gold, with pomp of autumn, the fruits of the vine in great clear pyramids of white and purple; tossed there so idly in such profusion from the past vintage-time, that a copper coin or two could buy a feast for half a score of mouths. Some of the cl.u.s.ters rotted already from their over-ripeness.

She looked at them with the pa.s.sionate woeful eyes of a dog mad with thirst, which can see water and yet cannot reach it. She leaned towards them, she caught their delicious coldness in her burning hands, she breathed in their old familiar fragrance with quick convulsive breath.

"He dies there!" she muttered, lifting her face to the eyes of the woman guarding them. "He dies there; would you give me a little cl.u.s.ter, ever such a little one, to cool his mouth, for pity's sake?"

The woman thrust her away, and raised, shrill and sharp through all the clamor of the crowd, the cry of thief.

A score of hands were stretched to seize her, only the fleetness of her feet saved her. She escaped from them, and as a hare flies to her form, so she fled to the place whence she came.

She had done all she could; she had made one effort, for his sake; and all living creatures had repulsed her. None would believe; none would pity; none would hear. Her last strength was broken, her last faint hope had failed.

In her utter wretchedness she ceased to wonder, she ceased to revolt, she accepted the fate which all men told her was her heritage and portion.

"It was I who was mad," she thought; "so mad, so vain, to dream that I might ever be chosen as the reed was chosen. If I can save him, anyhow, what matter, what matter for me?"

She went back to the place where he lay--dying, unless help came to him.

She climbed the stairway, and stole through the foulness and the darkness of the winding ways, and retraced her steps, and stood upon his threshold.

She had been absent but one hour; yet already the last, most abject, most wretched penalty of death had come to him. They robbed him in his senselessness.

The night was wet. The rain dropped through the roof. The rats fought on the floor and climbed the walls. The broken lattice blew to and fro with every gust of wind.

A palsied crone, with ravenous hands, sheared the locks of his fair hair, muttering, "They will fetch a stoup of brandy; and they would take them to-morrow in the dead-house."

The old man who owned the garret crammed into a wallet such few things of metal, or of wood, or of paper as were left in the utter poverty of the place, muttering, as he gathered the poor shreds of art, "They will do to burn; they will do to burn. At sunrise I will get help and carry the great canvas down."

The rats hurried to their holes at the light; the hag let fall her shears, and fled through an opening in the wall.

The old man looked up and smiled with a ghastly leer upon her in the shadows.

"To-morrow I will have the great canvas," he said, as he pa.s.sed out, bearing his wallet with him. "And the students will give me a silver bit, for certain, for that fine corpse of his. It will make good work for their knives and their moulding-clay. And he will be dead to-morrow;--dead, dead."

And he grinned in her eyes as he pa.s.sed her. A shiver shook her; she said nothing; it seemed to her as though she would never speak again.

She set down her lamp, and crossed the chamber, and kneeled beside the straw that made his bed.

She was quite calm.

She knew that the world gave her one chance--one only. She knew that men alone reigned, and that the G.o.ds were dead.

She flung herself beside him on the straw and wound her arms about him, and laid his head to rest upon her heart; one moment--he would never know.

Between them there would be forever silence. He would never know.

Greatness would come to him, and the dominion of gold; and the work of his hands would pa.s.s amidst the treasures of the nations; and he would live and arise and say, "The desire of my heart is mine;"--and yet he would never know that one creature had so loved him that she had perished more horribly than by death to save him.

If he lived to the uttermost years of man, he would never know how, body and soul, she had pa.s.sed away to destruction for his sake.

To die with him!

She laughed to think how sweet and calm such sacrifice as that had been.

Amidst the folded lilies, on the white waters, as the moon rose,--she laughed to think how she had sometimes dreamed to slay herself in such tender summer peace for him. That was how women perished whom men loved, and loved enough to die with them, their lips upon each other's to the last. But she----

Death in peace; sacrifice in honor; a little memory in a human heart; a little place in a great hereafter; these were things too n.o.ble for her--so they said.

A martyrdom in shame; a life in ignominy--these were all to which she might aspire--so they said.

Upon his breast women would sink to sleep; among his hair their hands would wander, and on his mouth their sighs would spend themselves. Shut in the folded leaves of the unblossomed years some dreams of pa.s.sion and some flower of love must lie for him--that she knew.

She loved him with that fierce and envious force which grudged the wind its privilege to breathe upon his lips, the earth its right to bear his footsteps, which was forever jealous of the mere echo of his voice, avaricious of the mere touch of his hand. And when she gave him to the future, she gave him to other eyes, that would grow blind with pa.s.sion, meeting his; to other forms, that would burn with sweetest shame beneath his gaze; to other lives, whose memories would pa.s.s with his to the great Hereafter, made immortal by his touch: all these she gave, she knew.

Almost it was stronger than her strength. Almost she yielded to the desire which burned in her to let him die,--and die there with him,--and so hold him forever hers, and not the world's; his and none other's in the eternal union of the grave, so that with hers his beauty should be consumed, and so that with hers his body should be shut from human sight, and the same corruption feed together on their hearts.

Almost she yielded; but the greatness of her love was stronger than its vileness, and its humility was more perfect than its cruelty.

It seemed to her--mad, and bruised, and stunned with her misery--that for a thing so worthless and loveless and despised as she to suffer deadliest shame to save a life so great as his was, after all, a fate more n.o.ble than she could have hoped. For her--what could it matter?--a thing baser than the dust,--whether the feet of men trampled her in scorn a little more, a little less, before she sank away into the eternal night wherein all things are equal and all things forgotten.

CHAPTER XV.

That night the moon found the Red Mouse, and said,--

"Did I not declare aright? Over every female thing you are victorious--soon or late?"

But the Red Mouse answered,--

"Nay, not so. For the soul still is closed against me; and the soul still is pure. But this men do not see, and women cannot know;--they are so blind."

CHAPTER XVI.