“Look!—Look to the very end!”
The doctor’s comrades shuddered at his aspect as he crouched over her, seeming as though he were trying to peer with her eyes into some scene of horror they could not even imagine.
The young woman’s face was a mask of agony.
“Oh, you torture me,” she moaned, “you torture me—I see, and I do not want to see—oh, I do not want to see——”
“What do you see?”
“They are struggling together!—She fights desperately—what a wild cat she is! He is pinning her arms to her sides with his embrace—she throws her head back, back, to escape him. Ah! She has broken away! She runs to the table. What is she going to do?” The seer’s voice rose in acute alarm. “Ach, a revolver! Oh, no, no!” The ejaculation was a vehement and agonized protest. “Heinrich! Oh, leave her—leave her!—No, he laughs at her as he follows—and she is so desperate. Ah, he has got her up in a corner—he has seized her again—she is crying out—it is a name—she cries it again and again——”
“What name?”
“I hear it! Jules!—Jules!—that is it—Jules! Oh, what a tone of despair!”
The doctor closed his eyes and swayed. Then, mastering himself with a superhuman effort, he said hoarsely: