"That in the mortar--you call it a gum? Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come! And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, Sure to taste sweetly--is that poison too?" But, maddened by the deadlier drug of wretchedness, she loses for a moment the single vision of her rival: it were good to have _all_ the old man's treasures, for the joy of dealing death around her at that hateful Court where each knows of her misery. "To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!" She need but give a lozenge "at the King's," and Pauline should die in half an hour; or light a pastille, and Elise, "with her head and her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead." . . . But he is taking too long. "Quick--is it finished? The colour's too grim! Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?" For if it were, she could watch that other stir it into her drink, and dally with "the exquisite blue," and then, great glowing creature, lift the goblet to her lips, and taste. . . . But one must be content: the old man knows--this grim drug is the deadly drug; only, as she bends to the vessel again, a new doubt assails her. "What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me-- That's why she ensnared him: this never will free The soul from those masculine eyes--say, 'No!' To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go. For only last night, as they whispered, I brought My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall, Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!" * * * * * But it is not painless in its working? She does not desire that: she wants the other to _feel_ death; more--she wants the proof of death to remain, "Brand, burn up, bite into its grace[236:1]-- He is sure to remember her dying face!" Is it done? Then he must take off her mask; he must--nay, he need not look morose about it: "It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close." She is not afraid to dispense with the protecting vizor: "_If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?_" There it lies--there. . . . "Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, You may kiss me, old man, on the mouth if you will!" --and, looking her last look round the den, she prepares to go; but what is that mark on her gorgeous gown? Brush it off! Brush off that dust! It might bring horror down on her in an instant, before she knows or thinks, and she is going straight from here to dance at the King's. . . . She is gone, with her jealousy and her anguish and her passion, and, clutched to her heart, the phial that shall end but one of those torments. + + + + +