'I need it to-night if ever I did,' he said half aloud. ''Tis the wine of life has got into my head.'
It was dark--almost too dark inside; that was because the fools had put down all the screens, when, on the contrary, they should be opened by night to let in the fresh air. He told himself that he would speak to the Secretary of the caretaker's neglect; yet how would that be since he would never see him again?
Yes! it was the last time! and how many times had he not gone down red-hot from the spring-board as he would do now, to come up out of the dark water a new man, with all the evil tempers and the prickly heat quenched out of him?--sure, as a regenerating element, fire wasn't in it with water! A leap in the dark indeed! But that was what life was, and he was not afraid of it.
The little bars of moonlight shining through the chinks between the bamboos came so far on the smooth white floor, then the soft depth of darkness where the cool water should be, and above it Dan poised for a second.
'I come! Mother of all!'
The oft, old-repeated cry rang joyously up into the roof, followed by a strange, dull thud, and silence--dead silence.
The bath had been emptied that morning for the cold weather, and Dan Fitzgerald was lying face downward on the hard cement with a broken neck.
Dead! Dead, without a word, a sigh, or a regret! And Chândni, growing tired of patience, went home to the bazaar, grumbling at her ill-luck, telling herself she might still write, if it were worth while.
But Dan was beyond her spite, beyond other things which, even without that spite, might have killed the best part of him.
Yet even in romance the sixth commandment outweighs all the others. The novelist may maim and degrade, may bear false witness against his own creations and filch from them the very characteristics which he has given them, in order to make degradation happy, but he must not kill; death in the verdict of the world being the only real tragedy.