"I am that Aholibah ... a witness through waste Asia ... that the strong men and the Captains knew ..." This line of Swinburne's was pronounced in the purest English. Ambroise did not understand. Then followed some rapidly uttered jargon that might have been Moorish. He soothed her, and softly passed his hand over her rough and dishevelled hair. His heart was bursting. She was after all his Aholibah, his first love. A crowd gathered. He asked for a doctor. A dozen students ran in a dozen different directions. The tired horse stamped its feet impatiently, and once it whinnied. The coachman lighted his pipe and watched his dying fare. Some wag sang a drunken lyric, and Ambroise repeated at intervals:—
"Please not so close, Messieurs. She needs air." Then she moved her head and murmured:
"Where's—my Prince? My—Prince Ambroise—I have something—" Her head fell back on his shoulder with a rigid jerk. In her clenched fingers he recognized his purse—smudged, torn, the serpent mouth gaping, the eyes empty.... And for the last time Ambroise saw scarlet—saw scarlet double. His two personalities had separated, never to merge again.
IV
REBELS OF THE MOON
"On my honour, friend," Zarathustra answered, "what thou speakest of doth not exist: there is no devil nor hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: henceforth fear naught."
The moon, a spiritual gray wafer, fainted in the red wind of a summer morning as the two men leaped a ditch soft with mud. The wall was not high, the escape an easy one. Crouching, their clothes the colour of clay, they trod cautiously the trench, until opposite a wood whose trees blackened the slow dawn. Then, without a word, they ran across the road, and, in a few minutes, were lost in the thick underbrush of the little forest. It was past four o'clock and the dawn began to trill over the rim of night; the east burst into stinging sun rays, while the moving air awoke the birds and sent scurrying around the smooth green park a cloud of golden powdery dust....
Arved and Quell stood in a secret glade and looked at each other solemnly—but only for a moment. Laughter, unrestrained laughter, frightened the squirrels and warned them that they were still in danger.