d and arranged the blankets over her
tenderly, hiding the hideous, gaping wound, with its unceasing flow;
carefully from sight. He closed her eyes, kissing them as he did so, and
folded her little white hands together, and then he pulled out the
disarranged lace at her throat and smoothed it mechanically, till it lay
quite to his satisfaction. Opal was so fastidious, he thought--so
particular about these little niceties of dress. She would like to look
well when they found her--dear Heaven!--to-morrow!

"No to-morrow!" he thought. They had spoken more wisely than they knew.
There would be no to-morrow for her--nor for him!

There was a tiny spot of blood upon the frill of her sleeve, and he
carefully turned it under, out of sight. He looked at the ugly stains
upon his own garments with a thrill of satisfaction. She was his! Was it
not quite right and proper that her blood should be upon him?

But even then, frenzied as he was, he had a singular care for
appearances, a curious regard for detail, and busied himself in removing
all signs of his presence from her chamber--all tell-tale traces of the
storm of passion that swept away her life--and his! He felt himself
already but the ghost of his former self, and laughed a weird, half-mad
laugh at the thought as it came to him.

He bent over her again. He would have given much to have lain down
beside her and slept his last sleep in her cold, lifeless arms. But no!
Even this was denied him!

He wound a tress of her hair about his fingers, and it clung and twined
there as her white fingers had been wont to twine. Oh, the pity of her
stillness--her silence--who was never still nor silent--never
indifferent to his presence! She looked so like a sleeping child in her
whiteness and tranquillity, her red-brown hair in disordered waves about
her head, her eyes closed in the last long sleep. And he wept as he
pressed his burning lips to hers, so cold, so pitifully cold, and for
the first time unresponsive. Oh, God, unresponsive forever!

"Poor little girl!" he moaned, between sobs of hopeless pain. "Poor
little passionate girl!... Poor little tired Opal!"

And with a dry sob of unutterable anguish, he picked up the dagger--the
cruel, kind little dagger--and crept to his own room.

The dagger was still wet with her blood. "Her blood!--Oh, God!-her
blood!--hers! All mine in life, and yet never so much mine as now--mine
in death!--all mine! mine! And she was not afraid--not the