Her voice faded away. She stood, turning her head from side to side, looking around wildly. Her brow contracted itself into deeper furrows. In the silence she unconsciously bit at her finger-nails, tearing one down to the quick—yet she felt no pain.
Quite suddenly there awoke in her memory an almost obliterated recollection. Loudly and wrathfully she cried—
"Sekhet—you have failed me—you have forsaken me! I prayed to you once. Now you must answer my prayer, for I invoke you. You are great now as ever. I demand your help—demand it! How can I ensure that man's eternal silence? Tell me—tell me!"
She stood for a moment with trembling forefinger outstretched, indicating the motionless form upon the divan. Did she expect some mystic voice to respond to her appeal? No sound broke the silence, save the fly which hummed and buzzed and flung itself with blind unavailing endeavour against the window-panes.
But into her brain—that poor brain so tortured and goaded by cruel anxiety, by a bitter insult, by a great, passionate love threatened with destruction—sprang the instinctive thought of that primæval resource:
"Death! Death! Only death can bring eternal silence!"
Swiftly, yet very surely, a strange, unfamiliar influence had enwrapped this rebel against Fate. Who can declare authoritatively what supreme Power behind the Veil she had not summoned in that moment's distraught and reckless invocation? Be that as it may, she became obsessed by one of those all-mighty, dominating impulses that conquer the will, the judgment, even the desire; that crush down previously accepted ideas of right and wrong, forcing a fresh, oft-times dreaded, idea masterfully into a shrinking heart and mind.
And the message that had come to Evarne was terrible—terrific!
"Call Death to your aid! Kill your enemy! Kill him while there is yet time!"
Even through the passion of rage that shook her, she felt a momentary subduing chill of horror. She pressed her hands to either cheek, and with strained features, parted lips and staring, dilated eyes, gazed wildly into vacancy.