He was swaying a little, giddy, it seemed.

She looked him full in the face and saw things there which she had never seen before. A great horror was upon him, a frightful awakening from the long, sensual sloth of his life.

Moving, working, in that great countenance, generally so impassive, uninfluenced by any emotion—at least to her long watchings—except by a moody irritation, she saw Doom, Fate, the Call of the Eumenides.

It came to the poor woman in a sudden wave of illuminating certainty.

She knew the end had come.

And yet, strangely enough, she felt nothing but a quickening of the pulses, a swift embracing pity which was almost a joy in its breaking away of barriers.

If the end were here, it should be together—at last together.

For she loved this cruel, sinning man, this lover of light loves, this man of purple, fine linen, and the sparkling deadly wines of life.

"Kate!"

He said it once more.