"The moon went out behind a cloud. He had slid to the floor and lay there, his head upon his arm. Then--he told me that later--he heard somebody hickup, hickup hard, metallically. After a while he discovered that it was he. He was sobbing. And long in the enfevered darkness there pulsed that strange, hard hickup of the man with the iron hand of woe upon his throat. "He must have fallen asleep at last; when he awoke again a sense of danger weighed upon his whole body like lead. He was stretched full length, his face downward upon his arms, and although he did not turn his head to see, he knew that it was dark, pitch dark. It seemed to him that a moment ago something cold and steely had touched his temple. "He lay thus, it seemed to him a long time, motionless, while his heart-pulse rose in crescendo till it almost suffocated him. For to his ears, along the sound-conducting floor, there came a faint, soft rustle of something, somebody crawling. A mad desire to rise, shout, attack, break the silent horror of the moment, thrilled him, but fear laid its cold, paralysing hand upon him, and he could not move. "Suddenly the spell was broken. A click as of a knife falling from the hand of an assassin to the floor shot the blood through his veins as by chemical reaction. With a shout he had sprung to his feet, darted across the room, and seized the Mauser beneath his pillow. He turned his eyes upon the floor and in the center caught sight of a vague, crouching form. A shot rang into his ears, vibrated in pain along each of his nerves, and then he was leaning back against the bed-post, limp and cold, sick with the sense of mistake, mistake hideous and irretrievable. "He stayed there, against the bed-post, limp and cold, his eyes straining through the darkness at the vague huddle in the centre of the room. He knew that Maria had awakened with a scream, that she had struck a light, that she was bending over the nameless thing, and he felt a strange relief as her broad back hid it from view. But she returned toward him, and put her dilated eyes, her brown face, fear-spotted, near his own, and she whispered, hoarsely, 'Magdalena!' "But this was only confirmation of what his whole being was crying to him, and he was busy listening to something else, listening to the crack of a Mauser pistol tearing through his brain, and then springing out into the silent night, echoing, swelling, thundering in fierce crescendo down the hushed streets, reverberated from wall to wall, rushing, a tidal wave of sound, into every house and nook and crevice, shouting, proclaiming, shrieking with its iron voice the story of his life, of his degradation, till the whole city, ringing from the call, hurled it on and on across the sea into Her ears, the heralding trumpet-call of his dishonour, of his fall, of his degradation.