"'Die!'" she exclaimed, in an exultant tone, and quoting the words of her play. "'This Rosamond sends.'"
There was a weird roll of her glittering eyes as she flung out her left hand tightly clenched: a swiftness and ferocity in the downward stroke of the stiletto in her right, so suggestive of real murder that Idris glanced at her feet, almost expecting to see a human figure lying there.
Beatrice gave a cry of genuine terror. Ivar looked on with evident admiration.
For a few seconds Lorelie maintained a rigid bending pose, her eyes dilated with terror, staring at the hearth as if she beheld something there. Then, with a motion startling in its suddenness, she recovered her erect attitude, and reeled backward with her lifted hand clenched upon her brow. The stiletto dropped from her limp fingers, and the peculiar ringing sound produced by its contact with the tiled hearth was fresh in Idris' ears for many days afterwards.
"'A-a-ah!'" she cried in a long-drawn thrilling sibilant whisper, which, nevertheless, penetrated to every corner of the apartment, and again quoting from her play. "'Ah! He moves! His eyes open! That look of reproach! I dare not,'" she went on, gasping for breath, "'I dare not strike again! Helmichis, do thou strike for me.'"
With averted face she staggered back and dropped upon a couch, apparently exhausted by real or simulated emotion.
"Bravo! bravo!" cried Ivar, clapping his hands. "The divine Sarah couldn't do it better. By heaven! we ought to have this play staged, with you in the rôle of Rosamond. You'd be the talk of London."
As for Idris, the diablerie of Lorelie's manner had given him a sensation very much akin to horror.