Even to give him comfort in his last moments she could not deny the truth of his words. “Destiny has served us cruelly,” she said. “I am sorry—sorry for all that has come and gone. If I have acted harshly, ungenerously, forgive, oh, forgive me!”
A smile that chilled her blood just curved his lip. “If you had not been so bitter against me,” he answered, his voice gaining strength, “destiny would have been kinder.”
“God help me if that is true!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I tried to be—yes, I was—all that I promised. If there was bitterness in my heart before, believe me, it is not so now. If I have wronged you grant me your pardon.”
A grimace that frightened her came over his face, where death hues began to show. He rose a little on one elbow, but sank back again, making a gesture of distress.
“I will go for aid,” she said, and would have left him, but he spoke, and she paused to listen.
“If I go he shall not live—he for whom you hated me,” he said, with a passion of malice that shook his frame. “He shall not live!”
She thought he meant that Mario would die from his wound.
“He will die by my command. His end is decreed—decreed by me,” Tarsis went on with a hideous chuckle.
Now she thought it the raving of a delirious brain.
“You do not believe me,” he said, striving to laugh. “But you will believe when you see his white face in the night. By my hand he will die within the hour.”