When the garden was finished and planted with all the flowers the island could afford, the Master led Mashinka to the door, which had hitherto been closed to her, opened it, and said simply:
"The garden is yours!"
"The garden is yours!"
And as the girl, weeping with joy, threw herself at his feet, pressed his hand to her lips and covered it with her tears—did not the captive spirit throb rebelliously within its weak bodily prison, and ask: "Is not a single tear like these—a single cry of joy—sweeter far than a sea of blood, and a chorus of death-shrieks from the throats of thousands of vanquished enemies?"
At the thought, he pushed the girl away from him and rushed up to his laboratory, there to continue the work of destruction.
CHAPTER VI
Compensation
One day, while the inmates of the tower were preparing for one of their fiendish festivals, the Master's little son came into Mashinka's room. He had just come up from the underground "chapel." The boy's face looked sorely troubled. When Mashinka asked what ailed him, he whispered softly to her: