the west,
and the sun declining slowly in its haze of golden air, sinking downward
past the bars of cloud.

All was quiet, save the dull sounds of the parting waters, when some
loathsome reptiles stirred among its brakes, or the hot breeze moved its
pestilential plants; and in the silence they stood fronting each other;
in this silence they had met, in it they would part. And there, on their
right hand, through the break in the dank wall of leaves, shone the sun,
looking earthward, luminous, and blinding human sight like the gaze of
God.

The light from the west fell upon Erroll, touching the fair locks of his
silken hair, and shining in his azure eyes as they looked up at the
sunny skies, where a bird was soaring and circling in space, happy
through its mere sense and joy of life; and on Strathmore's face the
deep shadows slanted, leaving it as though cast in bronze, chill and
tranquil as that of an Eastern Kabyl, each feature set into the
merciless repose of one immovable purpose. Their faces were strangely
contrasted, for the serenity of the one was that of a man who fearlessly
awaits an inevitable doom, the serenity of the other that of a man who
mercilessly deals out an implacable fate; and while in the one those
present saw but the calmness of courage and of custom, in the other they
vaguely shrank from a new and an awful meaning. For beneath the suave
smile of the Duellist they read the intent of the Murderer.

The night was nigh at hand, and soon the day had to be gathered to the
past, such harvest garnered with it as men's hands had sown throughout
its brief twelve hours, which are so short in span, yet are so long in
sin. "LET NOT THE SUN GO DOWN UPON YOUR WRATH." There, across the west,
in letters of flame, the warning of the Hebrew scroll was written on the
purple skies; but he who should have read them stood immutable yet
insatiate, with the gleam of a tiger's lust burning in his eyes--the
lust when it scents blood; the lust that only slakes its thirst in life.

They fronted one another, those who had lived as brothers; while at
their feet babbled the poisonous waters, and on their right hand shone
the evening splendour of the sun.

"One!"

The word fell down upon the silence, and the hiss of a shrill cicada
echoed to it like a devil's laugh. Their eyes met, and in the gaze of
the one was a compassionate pardon, but in the gaze of the other a
relentless lust.

And the sun sank slowly downward beyo