The blood rushed from his mouth; a slight convulsion shook him; he fell back. They found her--they, the shameful ones, when they slunk presently from their ghastly ambush--clinging insensible to the lifeless body. CHAPTER XXVIII. A POSTHUMOUS EXISTENCE “And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new moon she saw not: but in peace Hung over her sweet basil ever more, And moistened it with tears unto the core.” In that strange long sleep of swoons and haunted wakings there was a dream she had. Something had always troubled her--a sense of something left undone, on the fulfilment of which a rapturous tryst depended. It was associated with a promise, which yet was a promise conditional on something to be performed. At first, in her half-lucid intervals, she had been content to lie quite still and resigned, secure in the thought that no more than the third day was needed to see her broken heart made whole in the transport of a swift re-union; but the day came and passed, and she was still lying unreleased in the quiet room. Why was it so? She had made so sure of the promise, and yet the sign had been withheld. Weak tears dropped from her eyes. If not three days, then what? Soon it must be, in this state of bodily and mental prostration into which she was fallen. But when? O, death had been cruel to cut short and confound that message in the very moment of its utterance! If only she could know, she could endure. And then came the dream--or so it seemed. She thought that once, quite suddenly and blissfully enlightened, she rose in the sweet clear morning, when all her watchers were asleep, and, descending the stairs softly, passed out into the gardens by way of a door that had been strangely left unlocked. Then swiftly her bare feet were on the dewy grass, and she was running. She ran down by the trees to that place of delirious memory, and there were the crushed flowers and the trampled ground to convince her of the truth of what had been. The spot, it seemed, had been avoided since, and only a hurried attempt had been made to obliterate the traces of the tragedy. But deep in the bushes she saw half-hidden what she had come to seek--what she had never doubted that she should find--a little blood-soaked handkerchief. She had cast it from her when she had clasped him at the last. Hurriedly she secured her prize, and, kissing it, hid it in her bosom. The blood had dried upon it, and it left no mark upon her lips. She turned and ran again.