The diamond ring on his finger had scratched the glass, which, as all badly-cooled crystals are wont to do, shivered instantly at the contact, scattering its sparkling fragments in every direction like a Bologna flask.
Banfi shrank shuddering back at this phenomenon and hid his face in Azrael's bosom, as if he had seen a portentous enchantment.
The girl, however, impetuously seized her glass and cried exultantly—
"I drink to our love."
Her voice broke the spell of Banfi's sobering horror and plunged him into frenzied joy. He caught the slim, supple body of the odalisk in his arms, and pressed her to him with the strength of a boa-constrictor: she was almost stifled in his embrace.
"I know not what you have given me to drink," stammered Banfi, "but I have lost my head. I am beside myself for love."
"Then take heed that thou dost not faint. Long hast thou let me languish, and I swore that when next thou camest, to murder thee in thy sleep, so that thou mightest never forsake me more."
"Oh, do it, do it," whispered he, and drawing his dagger from his girdle and stretching himself at full length upon the couch, he laid bare his breast with one hand and gave the girl the dagger with the other.
Azrael, with demoniacal ferocity, grasped the dagger by its beryl handle, and threw herself like an armed Fury upon Banfi, who looked at her with a frenzied smile as the sharp edge of the dagger grazed his breast. Then the weapon fell from the hand of the odalisk, and the madly-distended eyes and lips resumed their languishing smile.
"Kill me rather than forsake me," stammered the girl, embracing Banfi.