“You see I had to come,” said Bessie, drawing a little closer, “for they are digging your grave out there close beside the baby’s, and they told me to tell you. The ghosts are all around, laughing because you are coming. They are going to put you in the grave and cover you all over with skulls, and bleeding hearts, and then, away down in the darkness, you will wait, and wait, and watch for some one to come and take you away, and who do you think will come?”
“You have talked enough,” said Max.
“You don’t want to know, but I will tell you. It will be Bessie, the maniac. Do you know Bessie, that you loved once? You can’t get away now, for the maniac has come to take you down to the dark, cold grave, where all the souls of mad women are calling your name.”
Max raised himself, and leaning his head on his elbow, his eyes grew almost as wild as though he, too, were a maniac.
“Girl,” he said, “leave me; you will drive me mad, too.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Bessie, as she drew a sharp, glittering knife from her bosom.
Max drew back in affright.
“Darling,” she shrieked, “we are going away together to find the ghosts, and we will make the air ring with the wild music that we shall make as we dance and leap over the graves that are waiting for us.”
She raised the knife, and with superhuman strength held him fast, and buried it in the heart of her betrayer. As a loud curse arose to his lips, and his head fell backward, she plunged the knife into her own heart, and with a wailing cry she sank upon the breast of the man she had so fondly and so unwisely loved.