“I have nothing but what she has written,” I answered, shrinking from his questions as if they had been poniards.
“But she does not tell all—not a word since that night. She was going somewhere—she talked about dying, but that is not easy, Zana—see how long I have been about it, and not dead yet. Tell me what she has been doing since that miserable, miserable night.”
“Ask her in Eternity!” I said, attempting to free myself from his embrace. “If the dead forgive, ask forgiveness of her there.”
He drew back upon his knees, supporting himself by the marble pressure of his hands upon my arms.
“Dead. Is Aurora dead?” fell in a whisper from his white lips. “Is she waiting for me there?”
“She is dead!” I answered.
“When, how, where did she die?” he questioned, with sudden energy, and a glitter of the eye that burned away all the tears.
I hesitated one minute—an evasion was on my lips. I could not tell him how his victim had died; it was striking a poniard into the last struggles of waning life. Suffering from the agony of his look I turned my head away; the fringe of my mother’s shawl caught in the ruby ear-rings that were swayed by the motion. A fiery pain shot through my temple; the gipsy blood ran hot and bitterly in my veins. His voice was in my ear again, feeble, but commanding.
“Speak—how did Aurora die?”
The answer sprung like burning lava to my lips. I forgot that it was a dying man to whom I spoke. My words have rung back to my own soul ever since, clear and sharp as steel.