love with you and I never was. It's been a
pretty flirtation, nothing more. I'm going home tomorrow, and----'

"'But you will come again? Surely you will come again?' she pleaded,
'You cannot mean it when you say you do not love me, Edouard. Tell me
that you spoke so but to tease me----'

"A warning hiss sounded in the grass beside my foot, but I was too
angry to be frightened. 'Go ahead, set your devilish snake on me,' I
taunted. 'Let it bite me. I'd as soon be dead as----'

"The snake was quick, but Julie quicker. In the split-second required
for the thing to drive at me she leaped across the grass-grown aisle
and pushed me back. So violent was the shove she gave me that I fell
against the tomb, struck my head against a small projecting stone and
stumbled to my knees. As I fought for footing on the slippery grass I
saw the deadly, wedge-shaped head strike full against the girl's bare
ankle and heard her gasp with pain. The snake recoiled and swung its
head toward me, but Julie dropped down to her knees and spread her
arms protectingly about me.

"'_Non, non, grand'tante!_' she screamed; 'not this one! Let me----'
Her voice broke on a little gasp and with a retching hiccup she sank
limply to the grass.

"I tried to rise, but my foot slipped on the grass and I fell back
heavily against the tomb, crashing my brow against its shell-set
cement wall. I saw Julie lying in a little huddled heap of white
against the blackness of the sward, and, shadowy but clearly visible,
an aged, wrinkled Negress with turbaned head and cambric apron
bending over her, nursing her head against her bosom and rocking back
and forth grotesquely while she crooned a wordless threnody. Where had
she come from? I wondered idly. Where had the snake gone? Why did the
moonlight seem to fade and flicker like a dying lamp? Once more I
tried to rise, but slipped back to the grass before the tomb as
everything went black before me.

"The lavender light of early morning was streaming over the tomb-walls
of the cemetery when I waked. I lay quiet for a little while,
wondering sleepily how I came there. Then, just as the first rays of
the sun shot through the thinning shadows, I remembered. Julie! The
snake had bitten her when she flung herself before me. She was gone;
the old Negress--where had _she_ come from?--was gone, too, and I was
utterly alone in the old graveyard.

"Stiff from lying on the ground, I got myself up awkwardly, grasping
at the flo