The contact of cold steel on his heated brow was at once pleasant and alarming.
“What about Sina?” he asked himself. “Ah! well, I shall never get her, and so I leave to some one else this enjoyment.” The thought of Sina awoke tender memories, which he strove to repress as sentimental folly.
“Why should I not do it?” His heart seemed to stop beating. Then once more, and deliberately this time, he put the revolver to his brow and pulled the trigger, His blood ran cold; there was a buzzing in his ears and the room seemed to whirl round.
The weapon did not go off; only the click of the trigger could be heard. Half fainting, his hand dropped to his side. Every fibre within him quivered, his head swam, his lips were parched, and his hand trembled so much that when he laid down the revolver it rattled against the table.
“A fine fellow I am!” he thought as, recovering himself, he went to the glass to see what he looked like.
“Then I’m a coward, am I?” “No,” he thought proudly, “I am not! I did it right enough. How could I help it if the thing didn’t go off?”
His own vision looked out at him from the mirror; rather a solemn, grave one, he thought. Trying to persuade himself that he attached no importance to what he had just done, he put out his tongue and moved away from the glass.
“Fate would not have it so,” he said aloud, and the sound of the words seemed to cheer him.
“I wonder if anyone saw me?” he thought, as he looked round in alarm. Yet all was still, and nothing could be heard moving behind the closed door. To him it was as if nothing in the world existed and suffered in this terrible solitude but himself. He put out the lamp, and to his amazement perceived through a chink in the shutter the first red rays of dawn. Then he lay down to sleep, and in dream was aware of something gigantic that bent over him, exhaling fiery breath.