“Let me go, I tell you. I see no other way. Hide, and let me go!”
Her step was the step of a queen. Perhaps she knew the sentence that had been pronounced. Upon the threshold an icy feeling of ultimate decision came over her. Her eyes were veiled. The way seemed far to her and moved her to impatience. From the reflection of fire and the twilit greyness, men bounded toward her and receded, surrounded her and melted back. The nobility of her figure still had power over them; but behind them venomous demons raged and made a path toward her. She spoke some Russian words. The flaring whirl of heads and shoulders surged fantastically up and down. She saw necks, beards, teeth, fists, ears, eyes, foreheads, veins, nails. Features dislimned; the faces melted into a glow of flame. Fire crackled in her gymnasium; hatchets crashed against costly things; smoke filled the corridors; maniacal cries tore the air. Eva turned.
It was too late. No magic of look or gesture availed. The depths were unleashed.
She fled with the lightness of a gazelle. Loutish steps followed her, and the wheezing of loud lungs. She reached the stairs of the quadrangular tower, the structure of her whim. She ran up the stairs. High up the gilded steps sparkled in the first glint of dawn. Her hand glided without friction over the balustrade. The painted enamel, another creation of her whims, was cool and calming to her palms. Her pursuers grunted like wolves. But the light seemed to lift her upward. She burst into the silvery morning, and beheld the burning buildings swaying in the wind and the wide sea. Her pursuers surged after her like a great heap of limbs, a polypus with hair and noses and cruel teeth.
She leaped upon the parapet. Arms reached out after her. Higher! Ah, if there were a higher height! Clouds covered the sky. Once upon a time it had been different. Stars had comforted her—the lordly reaches of the firmament. The memory lasted but a second. Hands grasped her; claws were at her very breast. Four, six, eight pairs of arms were stretched out toward her. A last reflection, a last struggle, a last sigh. The air divided with a whir. She plunged....
On slabs of marble lay her body. That marvellous body was a mass of bloody pulp. The broken eyes were open—empty, void of depth or knowledge or consciousness. Over the parapet the human wolves howled in their disappointed rage. Below others fell upon her dead. They tore the garments from her body, and stuck shreds of them, like flags, on poles and branches.
Slain on the threshold of her mistress’ bedchamber lay Susan Rappard.
When the work of plundering and destruction had been completed, the wild horde withdrew. A man of mercy and shame had finally thrown a horse-blanket over the dancer’s soiled and naked body.