When she saw that, she leaned and thrust a hand into the bleeding bosom of Henri Durien, and holding it aloft cried: “For this blood men must die.” Stooping again she seized the carbine and levelled it at the officer in command. Before she could pull the trigger some one fired, and she fell across the body of her lover. A moment afterwards Shorland stood beside her. She was shot through the lungs.
He stooped over her. “Gabrielle, Gabrielle!” he said. “Yes, yes, I know—I saw you. This is the twenty-fifth. He will be married to-morrow-Luke. I owed it to him to die; I owed it to Henri to die this way.” She drew the scarred portrait of Luke Freeman from her bosom and gave it over.
“His eyes made me,” she said. “They haunted me.
“Well, it is all done. I am sorry, ah! Never tell him of this. I go away—away—with Henri.”
She closed her eyes and was still for a moment; so still that he thought her dead. But she looked up at him again and said with her last breath: “I am—the Woman in the Morgue—always—now!”
PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
All is fair where all is foul
Answered, with the indifference of despair
Ate some coffee-beans and drank some cold water
He borrowed no trouble
His courtesy was not on the same expansive level as his vanity
It isn’t what they do, it’s what they don’t do
Mystery is dear to a woman’s heart
Never looked to get an immense amount of happiness out of life
No, I’m not good—I’m only beautiful
Preserved a marked unconsciousness
Should not make our own personal experience a law unto the world
Surely she might weep a little for herself
There is nothing so tragic as the formal
Time when she should and when she should not be wooed
Undisciplined generosity
Where the light is darkness
Women don’t go by evidence, but by their feelings
You have lost your illusions
You’ve got to be ready, that’s all