r
sketch at night-time. Riviere placed the campstool for her, and watched
her in silence as she plied her pencil with swift, decisive lines.

With lithe, catlike softness, the youth Crau had followed them up the
hillside, padding noiselessly in the shadows of the pines and olives.
Crouching behind a tree, he felt in his breast-pocket and drew out a
small package which he quietly unwrapped from its foldings. Then he
waited his moment with every muscle tensed for action.

The night wind was chill. Riviere started to pace up and down a few
steps away from Elaine. He approached nearer to the tree behind which
Crau was crouching in shadow.

The lithe, wiry figure of the young Provencal sprang out upon him.

"Now you'll pay me what you owe!" he cried out in Provencal. "You cursed
pig of an Englishman!"

Riviere did not understand the words, but the menace in the voice left
no doubt as to the meaning. And the voice brought back to him the narrow
_ruelle_ at Arles where he had defended Elaine from the insult of the
half-drunken peasant.

He was about to step forward to grapple with him, when a warning cry
from Elaine stopped him for one crucial instant.

"Look out! There's something in his hand!" she called, and rushed
impetuously forward to make her warning clear.

As she came within range, Crau raised his arm to throw his vitriol into
Riviere's face, but in a fraction of a second a sudden thought changed
the direction of his aim.

"Your beautiful mistress! that will serve me better!" he hissed out
venomously as he flung it full upon Elaine; then fled at top speed.

"My eyes! Oh God, my eyes!" she cried, as she staggered to the ground.

Riviere sprang to her side, white with alarm. "The beast!"

"My eyes! Oh God, my eyes!" she moaned. "My eyes--my livelihood!"

CHAPTER XV

WAITING THE VERDICT

Elaine lay in Riviere's room in the Villa Clementine. The doctor was
injecting morphine, and a sister of mercy, grave-eyed under her spotless
white coif like a Madonna of Francia, spoke soft words of comfort to
soothe the agony of the blinded girl.

In the adjoining room Riviere waited the decision of the doctor--waited
in tense, straining anxiety.

From that moment by the Druids' Tower when the vitriol had been flung
upon Elaine, he had lived through a nightmare. Up on the hillside he was
impotent to relieve her agony. No house around to take her to. Without a
moment's delay he must get her into the hands of