His lips continued to move, but so feeble was his voice that only fragments of what he said were audible. Seeing her strive to hear, he exerted himself pitifully to speak louder, and she made out the words: “You will be glad when I am gone.” Even to give him comfort in his last moments she could not deny the truth of his words. “Destiny has served us cruelly,” she said. “I am sorry--sorry for all that has come and gone. If I have acted harshly, ungenerously, forgive, oh, forgive me!” A smile that chilled her blood just curved his lip. “If you had not been so bitter against me,” he answered, his voice gaining strength, “destiny would have been kinder.” “God help me if that is true!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I tried to be--yes, I was--all that I promised. If there was bitterness in my heart before, believe me, it is not so now. If I have wronged you grant me your pardon.” A grimace that frightened her came over his face, where death hues began to show. He rose a little on one elbow, but sank back again, making a gesture of distress. “I will go for aid,” she said, and would have left him, but he spoke, and she paused to listen. “If I go _he_ shall not live--he for whom you hated me,” he said, with a passion of malice that shook his frame. “He shall not live!” She thought he meant that Mario would die from his wound. “He will die by my command. His end is decreed--decreed by me,” Tarsis went on with a hideous chuckle. Now she thought it the raving of a delirious brain. “You do not believe me,” he said, striving to laugh. “But you will believe when you see his white face in the night. By my hand he will die within the hour.” She turned away to shut out the sight of his face. “Still you do not believe,” she could hear him saying. “You think I do not know; but I know. You think he is safe. He is not. I saw him go by. Yes; with my own eyes I saw him pass--a moment before you came to the door. Now he is on the way to the monastery--the monastery where you held your trysts and deceived me; the monastery where a knife awaits his heart.” She wheeled suddenly, fearful now that he spoke the truth. “What do you mean?” she asked. A paroxysm of agony stifled the words he tried to speak. When it had passed somewhat he answered, straining every resource of his ebbing powers to the effort: “I lured him to the monastery to-night. The Panther will not fail. Not he! I did it--I!” She comprehended, she believed. At her heart a heavy aching began, the sinking sense of an irreparable loss. She strangled a cry, and fell upon her knees before the chair and buried her face in her hands. And Tarsis, seeing her thus affected, shook and choked with gloating laughter.