ght have been Moorish. He soothed her, and
softly passed his hand over her rough and dishevelled hair. His heart
was bursting. She was after all his Aholibah, his first love. A crowd
gathered. He asked for a doctor. A dozen students ran in a dozen
different directions. The tired horse stamped its feet impatiently, and
once it whinnied. The coachman lighted his pipe and watched his dying
fare. Some wag sang a drunken lyric, and Ambroise repeated at
intervals:--

"Please not so close, Messieurs. She needs air." Then she moved her head
and murmured:

"Where's--my Prince? My--Prince Ambroise--I have something--" Her head
fell back on his shoulder with a rigid jerk. In her clenched fingers he
recognized his purse--smudged, torn, the serpent mouth gaping, the eyes
empty.... And for the last time Ambroise saw scarlet--saw scarlet
double. His two personalities had separated, never to merge again.

IV

REBELS OF THE MOON

"On my honour, friend," Zarathustra answered, "what thou speakest
of doth not exist: there is no devil nor hell. Thy soul will be
dead even sooner than thy body: henceforth fear naught."

The moon, a spiritual gray wafer, fainted in the red wind of a summer
morning as the two men leaped a ditch soft with mud. The wall was not
high, the escape an easy one. Crouching, their clothes the colour of
clay, they trod cautiously the trench, until opposite a wood whose trees
blackened the slow dawn. Then, without a word, they ran across the road,
and, in a few minutes, were lost in the thick underbrush of the little
forest. It was past four o'clock and the dawn began to trill over the
rim of night; the east burst into stinging sun rays, while the moving
air awoke the birds and sent scurrying around the smooth green park a
cloud of golden powdery dust....

Arved and Quell stood in a secret glade and looked at each other
solemnly--but only for a moment. Laughter, unrestrained laughter,
frightened the squirrels and warned them that they were still in
danger.

"Well, we've escaped this time," said the poet.

"Yes; but how long?" was the sardonic rejoinder of the painter.

"See here, Quell, you're a pessimist. You are never satisfied; which, I
take it, is a neat definition of pessimism."

"I don't propose to chop logic so early in the morning," was the surly
reply. "I'm cold and nervous. Say, did you lift anything before we got
away?" Arved smiled the significant smile of a drinking man.