“He—who?”
“Socrate!”
It was indeed Socrate. But he was no longer there. He had already disappeared into the shadow, seized by avenging hands, mangled by a people’s fury, trampled under foot into blood and mud!
Helia had guessed rightly. Socrate had come on board the Columbia at Marseilles, where they had hastily taken on firemen. Under the exasperation of want, he took this occasion to follow Helia. He had learned as he prowled around the circus that she was going to Morgania on Miss Rowrer’s yacht, and he was not the man to let go his prey.
The events of the last day above all else had stirred him to fury. Helia a duchess! Helia in grandeur, while he, the misunderstood genius, should drag out his life in an attic! Ah! you will not be mine? Then you shall be no one’s! He had seized the occasion and planted his knife between Helia’s shoulders.
“Helia!” sobbed Suzanne. “Do you hear me? Answer!”
But Helia did not. The duke and Phil, terrified, bore her to the throne-room. The torches cast a tragic light upon the group. Immense shadows lengthened themselves out before them. The duke and Phil, bearing Helia, slowly advanced. The hall opened high before them, lighted dimly.
CHAPTER X
“ON YOUR KNEES!”
They laid Helia down at the foot of Phil’s picture, on the great ancestral throne on which the duke had hoped to seat himself beside Miss Rowrer. The iron candelabrum, hanging from the arch, lighted the hall. But Morgana’s stained window, more than all the rest, blazed with sanguinary flashes. This time it was not the sunset, as the duke had described it to Miss Rowrer, when he showed her the engraving in Paris; it was the light of torches and of the giant bonfire shining through it from without. The heroic statues, Thilda, Rhodaïs the Slave, and Bertha the Horsewoman, seemed to live again beneath the glow. The flashes of light from the window seemed to make them palpitate. One would have said that joy swelled their marble breasts when Helia, whose bodice had been undone, and whose wounds were bandaged, opened her eyes and breathed freely as she asked: “Where am I?”
“Oh, what a fright you’ve given us!” said Suzanne; “but now you’re saved. Do you suffer?”