“It was better once.... Hm, in the days of my charming forebears. Cloaks, and rapiers ... sinister-lipped smiles, wine-drenched feasts ... brocades and marbles ... incense and velvets ... witches, poisons, intrigues and a laugh of youth over the world. Ah, the Renaissance ... it lives in me still. A Bacchanal and a hymn of lust, pride, power ... their shadows whimper inside me....”
Undressed, he drew the curtains of his bed half together.
“They shut me out,” he murmured drowsily, staring at the dark hangings. “And I can dream more easily....”
... He had been asleep. Now his eyes opened. Terror stiffened his muscles. There was a noise. A foot was gliding over the rugs. Slowly, softly.... His thought dwindled.... “I’m awake ... awake....” He lay trembling. Someone was moving toward his bed ... a figure outside the curtains that hid him. Murmurings, creaks, far-away noises came to his frantic ears. But above them the gentle pat of a foot growing louder.
His throat suddenly dried and the skin on his body moved. A hand was drawing aside the curtains.
“Francesca mia,” whispered itself feebly through his brain. But the hand was real. Either that, or he was mad. No shadows, but a figure.... Or was he mad? An apparition. But this time it did not pantomime out of the darkness. It drew closer, its head billowing out the hangings. A woman!... He lay stiff and silent. A woman with hair hanging. Her eyes gleamed out of the dark....
“Hey!” he cried. But his motion had come too late. The dark figure’s hand lunged at him. He felt the steel of a knife burn in his flesh. Blood gushed across his eyes. A laugh, high-pitched and exultant, rang in his ears. He fell back and lay motionless....
CHAPTER XI
ELUSIVE CLIMAXES
In which Julien De Medici finds himself grewsomely decorated—In which he passes triumphantly on his own innocence—The exonerating wound—Candlestick and cross again and the laugh of a new Francesca—A new doubt—A telegram both absurd and bewildering—Cinematographic clews.
Dawn entered the room. The spring sun lay brightly across the floor. From the street below drifted in the noise of early traffic. And De Medici opened his eyes. For a moment he stared weakly at the canopy of his bed. Then a smile turned his lips.