[CHAPTER XXII.]
IN THE DARK
Julian supposed when he was awakened later on, and felt that he was drenched with a warm perspiration which caused his light tropical clothes to stick to him with a hot clammy feeling, that he must have slept for two hours. For now, as he lay on the sofa facing the window, he could see through the slats of the persianas, which he had forgotten to turn down, that, peeping round the window-frame there came an edge of the moon, which he seemed to recollect--dimly, hazily, and indistinctly--had risen late last night.
And that moon--which stole more and more into his view as he regarded it--was casting now a long ray into the bedroom, so that there came across the floor a streak of light of about the breadth of nine inches.
Yet--once his bemused brain had grasped the fact that this ray was there, while, at the same time, that brain was still clear enough to comprehend that every moment the flood of light was becoming larger, so that soon the apartment would be filled with it--he paid no further attention to the matter, nor to the distant rumbling of thunder far away--thunder that told of a tropical storm taking place at a distance. Instead, he was endeavouring to argue silently with himself as to the actual state in which his mind was; as to whether he was in a dreamy kind of delirium, or whether, in spite of any fever that might be upon him, he was still able to distinctly understand his surroundings.
If, as he hoped earnestly, the latter was the case; if he was not delirious, but only numbed by some ailment that had insidiously taken possession of him--then--why then--surely! he was in deadly peril of some immediate attack upon him--upon his life perhaps.
For, outside those persianas there was another light, two other lights glittering in upon him that were not cast by the moon, but that (because now and again her rays were thrown upon them) he discovered to be a pair of eyes. And not the eyes of an animal either, since they glisten in the dark, but, instead, human eyes that glared horribly as now and again the moonbeams caught them.
Only! was it the truth that they were real tangible eyes, or were they but a fantasy of a mind unhinged by fever?
He must know that! And he could only do so by lying perfectly still; by watching.
Those eyes which stared in at him now were low down to the floor of the balcony, even as he seemed to recollect Zara's eyes had been on one occasion during her nocturnal visits to him when he first arrived at Desolada; yet now he knew, felt sure, that they were not Zara's. Why he felt so sure he could not tell, nor in the feverish languor that was upon him, could he even reason with himself as why he did feel so sure. But, at the same time, he told himself, they were not hers. Of that he was certain.