“Bah!” he exclaimed at last with a forced laugh, “What stupid fancies fool me! It is all the vague talk of that would-be learned ass, Dr. Dean, with his ridiculous theories about life and death. I shall be imagining I am his fad, Araxes, next! This sort of thing will never do. Let me reason out the matter calmly. I love this woman,--love her to absolute madness. It is not the best kind of love, maybe, but it is the only kind I am capable of, and such as it is, she possesses it all. What then? Well! We go to-morrow to the Pyramids, and we join her at the Mena House, I and the poor boy Denzil. He will try his chance--I mine. If he wins, I shall kill him as surely as I myself live,--yes, even though he is Helen’s brother. No man shall snatch Ziska from my arms and continue to breathe. If I win, it is possible he may kill me, and I shall respect him for trying to do it. But I shall satisfy my love first; Ziska will be mine--mine in every sense of possession,--before I die. Yes, that must be--that will have to be. And afterwards,--why let Denzil do his worst; a man can but die once.” He drew the cloth off his easel and stared at the strange picture of the Princess, which seemed almost sentient in its half-watchful, half-mocking expression. “There is a dead face and a living one on this canvas,” he said, “and the dead face seems to enthral me as much as the living. Both have the same cruel smile,--both the same compelling magnetism of eye. Only it is a singular thing that I should know the dead face even more intimately than the living--that the tortured look upon it should be a kind of haunting memory--horrible--ghastly. …” He flung the cloth over the easel again impatiently, and tried to laugh at his own morbid imagination. “I know who is responsible for all this nonsense,” he said. “It is that ridiculous little half-mad faddist, Dr. Dean. He is going to the Mena House, too. Well!--he will be the witness of a comedy or a tragedy there,--and Heaven alone knows which it will be!” And to distract his thoughts from dwelling any longer on the haunting ideas that perplexed him, he took up one of the latest and frothiest of French novels and began to read. Some one in a room not far off was singing a French song,--a man with a rich baritone voice,--and unconsciously to himself Gervase caught the words as they rang out full and clearly on the quiet, heated air-- O toi que j’ai tant aimée Songes-tu que je t’aime encor? Et dans ton âme alarmée, Ne sens-tu pas quelque remord? Viens avec moi, si tu m’aimes, Habiter dans ces deserts; Nous y vivrons pour nous mêmes, Oubliés de tout l’univers! And something like a mist of tears clouded his aching eyes as he repeated, half mechanically and dreamily-- O toi que j’ai tant aimée, Songes-tu que je t’aime encor? CHAPTER XIII.