ly sound, were sitting--I saw this door open, and out of
the thick darkness another face look in.

"The light, as I have said, was very dim, but I could see his face as
plainly as I can see yours. A large yellow face it was, like a wax mask.
The lips were full, and lustful and cruel. The eyes were little eyes of
an evil gray. Thin yellow streaks marked the absence of the eyebrows;
thin yellow hair showed itself under a huge fur travelling-cap. The
whole face seemed to grow slowly into absolute distinctness as I looked,
by the sort of devilish light that it, as it were, radiated. I had
chanced upon a good many damnable visages before then; but there was a
cold fiendishness about this one such as I had seen on no man's face,
alive or dead, till then.

"The next moment the man this face belonged to was standing in the
carriage, that seemed to plunge and sway more furiously, as though to
waken them that still slept on. He wore a long fur travelling-robe, girt
about the waist with a fur girdle. Abnormally tall and broad as he was,
he looked in this dress gigantic. Yet there was a marvellous cat-like
lightness and agility about all his movements.

"He bent over the girl lying there helpless in her sleep. I don't make
rash bargains as a rule, but I felt I would have given years of my life
for five minutes of my lost freedom of limb just then. I tell you the
torture was infernal.

"The assassin--I knew he was an assassin--bent awhile, gloatingly, over
the girl. His great yellow hands were both bare, and on the forefinger
of the right hand I could see some great stone blazing like an evil eye.
In that right hand there gleamed something else. I saw him draw it
slowly from his sleeve, and, as he drew it, turn round and look at the
other sleeper with an infernal triumphant malignity and hate the Devil
himself might have envied. But the man he looked at slept heavily on.
And then--God! I feel the agony I felt in my dream then now!--then I saw
the great yellow hand, with the great evil eye upon it, lifted
murderously, and the bright steel it held shimmer as the assassin turned
again and bent his yellow face down closer to that other face hidden
from me in the shadow--the girl's face, that I knew was so fair.

"How can I tell this?... The blade flashed and fell.... There was the
sound of a heavy sigh stifled under a heavy hand....

"Then the huge form of the assassin was reared erect, and the bloated
yellow face seemed to laugh