sur l'arene,
Se levant a demi de leurs lits de repos
Des frissons de plaisir fremissent sur leurs peaux.
Le cri de la torture est leur douce harmonie,
Et leur oeil dans son oeil boit sa lente agonie.

I charged the Supreme Power with a cruelty deliberate, ruthless, serene.
Nero the tyrant once commanded a representation in grim earnest of the
Flight of Icarus; and the unhappy boy who took the part, at his first
attempt to fly, fell headlong beside the Emperor's couch and spattered
him with blood and brains. For the Emperor, says Suetonius, _perraro
praesidere, ceterum accubans, parvis primum foraminibus, deinde toto
podio adaperto, spectare consuerat_. So I believed that on the stage of
this world men agonised for the delight of one cruel intelligence which
watched from behind the curtain of a private box.

II

In this unhappy condition of mind, then, I was lying in my library chair
here at Sevenhays, at two o'clock on the morning of January 4th. I had
just finished another reading of the Tenth Vision and had tossed my book
into the lap of an armchair opposite. Fire and lamp were burning
brightly. The night outside was still and soundless, with a touch of
frost.

I lay there, retracing in thought the circumstances of Harry's last
parting from me, and repeating to myself a scrap here and there from the
three letters he wrote on his way--the last of them, full of high
spirits, received a full three weeks after the telegram which announced
his death. There was a passage in this last letter describing a
wonderful ride he had taken alone and by moonlight on the desert; a ride
(he protested) which wanted nothing of perfect happiness but me, his
friend, riding beside him to share his wonder. There was a sentence
which I could not recall precisely, and I left my chair and was crossing
the room towards the drawer in the writing-table where I kept his
letters, when I heard a trampling of hoofs on the gravel outside, and
then my Christian name called--with distinctness, but not at all loudly.

I went to the window, which was unshuttered; drew up the blind and flung
up the sash. The moon, in its third quarter and about an hour short of
its meridian, shone over the deodars upon the white gravel. And there,
before the front door, sat Harry on his sorrel mare Vivandiere, holding
my own Grey Sultan ready bridled and saddled. He was dressed in his old
khaki riding suit, and his face, as he sat askew in