in the arms of a more fortunate or a better woman. Fly, and
swiftly, for Deleroy had many friends and the King himself loved him
as a brother--as well he may. Fly, I say, and forgive--forgive! Hubert,
farewell!"

Thus she spoke, ever more slowly and lower, till with the last word her
life left her lips.

Thus ended the story of my marriage with Blanche Aleys.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

THE NEW WORLD

They were forever silent now, who, but a breath before, had been so full
of life and the stir of mortal passion; Deleroy dead beneath the cloak
upon the floor, Blanche dead in the oaken chair. We who remained alive
were silent also. I glanced at Kari's face; it was as that of a stone
statue on a tomb, only in it his large eyes shone, noting all things
and, as I imagined in my distraught fancy, filled with triumph and
foreknowledge. Considering it in that strange calm of the spirit which
sometimes supervenes on great and terrible events that for a while crush
its mortality from the soul and set it free to marvel at the temporal
pettiness of all we consider immediate and mighty, I wondered what was
the aspect of my own.

At the moment, I, who on this day had passed the portals of so many
emotions: that of the lover's longing for his bride won at last, only to
be lost again, that of acute and necessary business, that of the ancient
joy of battle and vengeance wreaked upon an evil man; that of the
unshuttering of my own eyes to the flame of a hellish truth, that of the
self-murder and turning to cold clay before those same eyes of her whom
I had hoped to clasp in honest love--I, I say, felt as though I, too,
were dead. Indeed all within was dead, only the shell of flesh remained
alive, and in my heart I echoed the words of my old uncle and of a wiser
than he who went before him--"Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!"

It was Kari who spoke first, Kari as ever calm and even-voiced, saying
in his broken English of which but the substance is recorded:

"Things have happened, good things I hold, though you, Master, may think
otherwise for a little while. Yet in this rough land of savages and
small justice these things may bring trouble. That lord brought a
writing," and he nodded towards the document on the table, "and talked
of death for _you_, Master--not for himself. And the lady, while she
still lived, she say--'Fly, fly or die!' And now?" and he glanced at the
two bodies.

I looked at him vacantly for the nu