Pale and perspiring icily, Balsamo looked at the exasperated female, and replied in a threatening voice:
“You are right; I should not cure you, but I would revive you!”
The Italian woman uttered a shriek of terror for knowing there was no bounds to the magician’s powers—she believed this—and he was saved.
A bell rang three times and at equal intervals.
“My man Fritz,” said Balsamo, “notifying me that a messenger is here—in haste—— ”
“Good, at last you are going to leave me,” said Lorenza spitefully.
“Once again,” he responded, taking her cold hand, “but for the last time. Let us dwell in pleasant union; for as fate has joined us, let us make fate our friend, not an executioner.”
She answered not a word; her dead and fixed eyes seemed to seek in vacancy some thought which constantly escaped her because she had too long sought it, as the sun blinds those who wish to see the very origin of the light. He kissed her hand without her giving any token of life. As then he walked over to the fireplace, she awoke from her torper and let her gaze fall greedily upon him.
“Ha, ha,” he said, “you want to know how I leave these issueless rooms so that you may escape some day and do me harm, and my brothers of the Masonic Order by revelations. That is why you are so wide awake.”
But extending his hands, with painful constraint on himself, he made a pass while darting the magnetic fluid from palm and eye upon her eyes and breast, saying imperatively: