“Have you done it?” she asked, and I knew she had set Basil on, though the Emperor Michael had loved her. “Quick! Have you done it?” “Yes,” he said, and the others came back. “What if he is not dead?” said John of Chaldia, and shifted his ivory and silver sabre in his grasp. Then she, flashing emerald colours in her robe, turned on them, and I saw there is more in a woman than her beauty. “You are not sure?” she cried, and held up the thousand coloured lamp. “Basiliskian is dead,” answered Apelates. “Is Michael dead?” she gave back. As she stepped towards the door I heard the soft sound her cambric garments made on the floor, and saw her eyes fixed before her with an expression of expectancy and pleasure–eyes like the black jade they prize in China. But Basil held her back with his swarthy hand on the edge of her mantle. On the smooth walls of opal-tinted tiles moonlight flushed into lamplight that fell tinted with trembling colour; I saw the dark trees through the window and the great space of clear sky. I pulled at the dagger in my wrist, and I heard the Emperor Michael lamenting within. At the sound of it all save the woman drew back. “I struck his hands off,” said John of Chaldia, “and he fell on the ground.” Eudocia Ingerina looked at Basil. “Will you be Emperor or no?” she asked. “If that man in there is not dead–what are _you_?” His flushed blue eyes rolled towards her; she twitched her robe from his grasp and lifted the thin silk curtains from the carved door. I, forgotten, caught hold of the ribbings of scented sandal wood and looked in … you may believe what I saw, what I was blinded for seeing. The Emperor Michael, Lord of the East, Vice-regent of God, the last of the Amorian Cæsars, sat on the floor by the gilt and glorious brocades of his bed. His hands were smitten off and his garments trailed with sticky blood; his head was bowed on his chest and he uttered bitter complaints. In his black hair some crimson roses still hung; the great rubies and topaz glittered on his breast. Behind him in the rich murk light I could see the other Emperor, a huddled heap of red and yellow, and in the middle of the marble floor (green as the tomb of Copronymus) the two hands of Michael, twisted into a clutching shape, with huge and wonderful rings on the fingers. With a soft movement like the dappled Persian deer Eudocia Ingerina stole into the chamber; Basil and John of Chaldia were behind her; she stopped before Michael; her lamp showed his creeping blood. “Well,” she said. “Well, shall I not be an Empress after all?” And she touched him with her foot that was covered with a shoe of green and violet leather, so that he looked up from his incoherent lamentations. He tried to rise at that, could not, but gave a shudder and raised his arms. “Eudocia,” he said, very loudly, and she stepped back a little, for he was a hideous sight.