Turning frightfully pale, he tottered and covered his eyes with both hands as though to escape a sight full of awe and horror.
“The soothsayer!” he exclaimed. “I see him ... in the midst of the darkness.... He is stretching out his arms to clutch me.”
Then, with failing voice, he murmured:
“That was the prediction ... that vile ... death by a woman’s hand.”
As he spoke, without an effort to save himself, he fell prostrate on the ground behind the boulder at the entrance of the cave, clouds of dust whirling upward around him.
Byssa, so brave a few moments before, trembled from head to foot. Her knees could no longer support her, and she sank down on a rock at the other side of the entrance.
Her eyes, as if by some magic spell, were fixed upon the figure behind the boulder. She saw the last convulsions shake the Pelasgian’s shoulders; she saw his hand clench in a spasmodic tremor; she saw the waxen hue of a corpse spread over his body—and could not avert her gaze.
XIV.
How long Byssa sat thus she knew not.
She felt neither hope nor fear; she had no distinct consciousness of what had happened.