The brief sentence leaped into his brain with the swift, fiery action of some burning drug,--a red mist rose to his eyes,--pushing her fiercely from him, he started to his feet in a bewildered, sick horror. KILL SAH-LUMA! ... kill the gracious, smiling, happy creature whose every minute of existence was a joy,--kill the friend he loved,--the poet he worshipped! ... Kill him! ... ah God! ... never! ... never! ... He staggered backward dizzily,--and Lysia with a sudden stealthy spring, like that of her favorite tigress, threw herself against his breast and looked up at him, her splendid eyes ablaze with passion, her black hair streaming, her lips curved in a cruel smile, and the hateful Jewel on her breast seeming to flash with ferocious vindictiveness. "Kill him!" she repeated eagerly--"Now--in his sottish slumber,--now when he hath lost sight of his Poetmission in the hot fumes of wine,--now, when, despite his genius, he hath made of himself a thing lower than the beasts! Kill him! ...--I will keep good council, and none shall ever know who did the deed! He loves me, and I weary of his love, . . I would have him dead--dead as Nir-jalis! ... but were he to drain the Silver Nectar, the whole city would cry out upon me for his loss,--therefore he may not perish so. But an thou wilt slay him, . . see!" and she clung to Theos with the fierce tenacity of some wild animal--"All this beauty of mine, is thine!--thy days and nights shall be dreams of rapture,--thou shalt be second to none in Al-Kyris,--thou shalt rule with me over King and people,--and we will make the land a pleasure-garden for our love and joy! Here is thy weapon.."--and she thrust into his hand a dagger,--the very dagger her slave Gazra, had deprived him of, when by its prompt use he might have mercifully ended the cruel torments of Nir-jalis,--"Let thy stroke be strong and unfaltering, . . stab him to the heart,--the cold, cold, selfish heart that has never ached with a throb of pity! ... kill him!--'tis an easy task,--for lo! how fast he sleeps!"