Only John Cabot made his exit loathfully. After the others had preceded him through the light-riven curtain, he paused; turned. Dolores knew that to the last he hoped of her. A gesture, a whisper, a sigh would have recalled him to full faith. He had meant what he said. Gladly would he have exchanged or shared her fate until that dim-distant day when justice was to take the universe.
But she did not make the gesture, vent the whisper, breathe the sigh. Rather, she forced the false laugh which that hour had stood her in such good stead and turned, affecting to think him gone, to her Satanic suitor. Seductively she leaned, as if to consummate the caress which John’s arrival had interrupted so short and yet so long a while before.
At the downward swish of the hangings, however, she drew back. The lilt of her laugh was lost in the realization that he who had come to find her had left her, lost. More moan than mirth it sounded at the thought that no lightning flash or whip of wind in the storm-ridden air outside could scourge him as had her treachery.
At her change of attitude, Satan sat back and watched her with unsmiling scrutiny.
“It is not too late to call them back if you regret the terms of our wager. ‘Anything’—wasn’t that your pledge?”
“But I do not wish them back. I am glad—so glad to be rid of them.”
“And I. You acknowledge that I have won the bet?”
“Yes, Your Lowness. You have—won.”
Any show of triumph he subdued. Even that peculiarly calculating expression in his eyes, which before had dismayed her, was covered by a sort of veil.
“The first thing I want of you,” said he quietly enough, “is your agreement that to-night shall be our nuptial night. I regret to dun a lady, yet I don’t like I. O. U.’s. Shall you find it convenient to pay?”