CHAPTER LXVIII
PERSIS watched him come, and did not move. It was unbelievable that disaster should fall to such as her from such as him in such a way. He was evidently only playing a part to frighten her.
She blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette and fanned it away with leisure, and smiled.
"You'd look well, now, wouldn't you, if one of the servants came in?"
She laughed at the picture.
"You're laughing at me again!" he groaned. "You're always laughing at me. But you won't feel so funny with this knife in you."
She saw now that he was not fooling. But she despised him for his effort to prove his bravery by a cowardice, and she eyed him with a marble calm worthy of a nobler cause and a better reward.
"Sit down, Willie, and don't threaten me. You don't frighten me at all. But you may alarm some of the servants and give them more of that gossip you have harped on so much."
Her obstinate pluck bewildered him, but he lowered his voice as he commented to some imaginary spectator: "My God! she has no higher thought than that! Even now when death stares her in the face!" Then he had a fanatic's mercy for her. "Why aren't you saying your prayers, you fool?"