"Will it?" said John, as he put back his pocket-book.
Archie laughed and went out.
Oh! it is good to be young and handsome and admired. The dancers pirouetted in the intense electric light, and the music played on every chord of Archie's light pleasure-loving soul. And he clapped and applauded with the rest, his pulse leaping high and higher. A sense of triumph possessed him. His one thorn in the flesh was gone for ever. He rode on the top of the wave. He had had all else before, and now the one thing that was lacking to him had come. He was rich, rich, rich. There was much goods laid up for many years of pleasure.
Archie touched the zenith.
It was very late, or rather it was very early, when he walked home through the deserted streets. A great mental exaltation was still upon him, but his body was exhausted, and the cool night air and the silence, after the babel of tongues, and the shrieking choruses, and the flaring lights of the last few hours, were pleasant to his aching eyes and head.
The dawn stretched like a drawn sword behind the city. The Seine lay, a long line of winding mist under its many bridges. The ruins of the scorched Tuileries pushed up against the sky. Archie leant a moment on the parapet, and looked down to the Seine below whispering in its shroud. He took off his hat and pushed back the light curling hair from his forehead, laughing softly to himself.
An invisible boat, with a red blur coming down-stream, was making a low continuous warning sound.
A hand came suddenly over his shoulder, and was pressed upon his mouth, and at the same instant something exceeding sharp and swift, pointed with death, pierced his back, once and again. Archie saw his hat drop over the parapet into the mist.
He tried to struggle, but in vain. He was choking.