An hour has passed, and the room has grown dark. The torches are expiring. In the huge vaulted chamber no other light is visible but the red vapour streaming from the orifices of the censer, which gleams like a many-eyed monster, and the burning end of the linstock, lit by Banfi in the midst of his mad orgy, crawling slowly along the room like a fiery serpent. Naught is to be heard in the deep silence but the sighs of two lovers, and the throbbing of two hearts. Banfi slept long. Suddenly he awoke. Pitch-black darkness surrounded him. It was some time before his reeling brain could realize where he was, or why he was there. He felt an icy wind streaming through the room, but it was only after a long interval that he grasped the fact that a door was open somewhere, and that the cold night air was rushing in from outside. Gradually the scenes of the by-gone night and the vows of death came back to his mind, and he felt that he still lived. "The girl has certainly repented of her wish to die," thought he, and he began to grope about for her. The couch was empty. "Azrael! Azrael!" he cried repeatedly; but there was no answer. At last he tottered to his feet, and snatching some embers from the hearth, lit a torch. The solitary, feeble light did not penetrate far, but as far as it extended Azrael was nowhere to be seen. The first thing he perceived was the linstock cut in two by a pair of shears. "Coward soul!" he growled, and, pierced through and through by the air, would have put on his mantle, when a roll of parchment fell at his feet, and picking it up he recognized Azrael's handwriting, and read as follows-- "My lord, you read not hearts aright. We give our love for our own sakes, but we do not give ourselves for love's sake. You have frittered away your power, and, deserted by all the world, think to find me faithful who loved your power and that only: I am his who has inherited that power. He who is in the ascendant I adore, but I hate and despise the fallen. Corsar Beg's fate should have warned you that one day you too might fare like him ..." Banfi could not read it to the end. His face grew dark with shame. "To sink so low as this! This wretched slavish soul even while embracing me was devising treachery! And I to wish to spend my last moments in the arms of such a monster----" At that moment he _loathed_ himself. "Cowardice and infamy! A man who has lived as I have lived, to desire such a death! He who has always been wont to meet his foes face to face, to hide himself from them in his last moments!--to hide himself in the arms of a slave! Shame upon him!