Down the deck she came, slowly, as a queen going to her throne. She turned….
The man hiding in the passageway confronted her. His eyes were burning as of a fever; his whole body shook…. She remained calm, cold, unmoved.
At length, the woman spoke, half smiling:
"You? … I thought that we were through."
His voice was tense, strained, unnaturally pitched. The words came between clenched teeth.
"You did, eh? You thought you'd throw me over, as you did Rogers, and Van
Dam, and the rest of them…. But it won't work—you Vampire!"
Swiftly, he tore from his right hand, the handkerchief that covered it. There was in it a revolver. The bright mouth of the weapon sprang to the white forehead of The Woman.
Yet she did not start—she made no sound, no movement. The smile still dwelt upon her lips. It was only in the eyes that a difference came—in the black, inscrutable eyes. They gleamed now, heavy-lidded as before. Their gaze was fixed straight into the sunken, hate-lit eyes of the man before her, a man who, but for her, might still have been a boy. She bent forward a little…. Her forehead, between the eyes, was now touching the bright muzzle of the weapon. The finger on the trigger trembled— trembled but did not pull.
Came slowly, sibillantly, from between the smiling red lips:
"Kiss me, My Fool!"