No one spoke, no one moved. Each seemed transfixed with unutterable horror. Then from the awful silence, as if to break its spell, arose a shriek, shrill and piercing.
And leaping hurriedly from the boxes, and over the surrounding barriers, with exclamations and bursts of smothered horror, the multitude pressed around the prostrate form.
They raised it and looked upon it. A ghastly sight! From the glaring and upturned eye; from the distorted form, life seemed to have departed; but through the blue lips oozed slowly a purple foam, and across the brow a single vein grew black and knotted, and worked like a reptile in its death-agony.
“It is all over,” whispered a bystander, as even this lothesome motion ceased; and his words were passed from mouth to mouth in murmurs that scarcely broke the silence into which the crowd again had hushed.
There, from his lurking place, still gazed the husband of Mabel Clifdon; but his form no longer swayed and quivered, and his face was like marble. Only from beneath his bent brows shot a strange and terrible fire.
It was as though a demon had entered the sculptured form of an angel, and concealed beneath its beauty, betrayed only through the insensible eyes, the baleful hideousness of his presence.
The crowd began to disperse, at first singly, and then in whispering groups, but he stirred not; some one even shouted his name, but he stood without the power to move.
Something brushed against his shoulder, and a low neigh sounded thrillingly in his ear. He turned, and with her large, dark, half human eyes fixed upon him, White Fleeta stood beside her master.
It seemed as if that gentle and tender gaze had suddenly broken the fearful spell that bound him, for flinging himself to the earth with a burst of passion, Clifdon lay there, convulsed and agonized, while the animal that his hands had ever fed, and that loved him as it is in the nature of its generous kind to love, knelt by his side, and with a soft moan, rubbed her glossy head against his shoulder.
Again his name was shouted, and springing to his feet, he stood for a few minutes struggling with mighty efforts to regain his composure; and then, deadly pale, but calm, drew back the curtain, and once more entered the saloon.