many by your wicked acts!"

Hannibal shrugged his shoulders.

"It is true, nevertheless," he replied. "I am a negro. In a moment of
insanity I dreamed I was a Man! I dreamed I might gain for my wife a
woman whose ancestors had been born in a more northerly clime than my
own. To gain that end I took the only course that seemed open. I
possessed myself of an influence that would make her father fear me.
Well, I played and I lost--and then, like other players and losers, even
white ones, I was desperate. You were to be married to another--a man I
hated. Life had lost its only charm, I could not bear that you should be
his bride. My torture was intense. I asked but for death."

These revelations, so novel to at least one of the listeners, smote him
with terrific force.

"You asked for more!" said the girl, hoarsely. "You asked for my death
as well as your own. And you wanted me to die in such a situation that
all the world would say I had perished willingly with you. Could
anything more cowardly be conceived! Was anything more dastardly ever
devised! It was the morning of my wedding day; my father was waiting for
me at home; my promised husband was preparing for the bridal; my friends
were invited to the ceremony. What were all these to you? With
Mephistophelian cunning you sent me a letter in another person's
handwriting, saying that, if I would come to a certain address, and pay
fifty dollars, several forged notes given by my father would be returned
to me. You knew I would respond. You knew I would tell no one where I
was going, as I did not expect to be detained more than an hour, and
there was apparently the strongest reasons for secrecy. And when I was
completely in your clutches you gave me the alternative of _marrying_
you--ugh!--or of taking the poison you had so carefully prepared. Oh,
how _could_ you! how _could_ you, when you professed to _like_ me!"

There was a low gurgle in Archie Weil's throat, that he could not
suppress. Fearful that it might be heard in that dead silence, Roseleaf
shook his companion slightly. Mingled with his other emotions there now
came to Weil a stupefied wonder at the apparent coolness of the
novelist.

"When one is willing to die for his love, it should not be questioned,"
said the negro. "I could not have you in life--I wanted you in death. I
wanted the world, which had despised me, to think a beautiful woman had
preferred to die with me rather than marry a man she did not w