"I don't know."
"Don't turn your eyes away; do you know what certain words in this world mean?"
"Signal one, and I will answer."
He looked so leonic that I felt the least bit in the world like running away, but decided to stay, as he was just within my pathway of escape.
"Do you know what it is, what it means, when a human soul calls out from its highest heights to another mortal, 'Thou art mine'?"
I do not think he expected an answer, but I answered a round, full, truthful, "No."
"Then let it be the theme of thanksgiving," he said. "That fair young girl is here now. I feel her sacred presence. She does not save me from my imperious will.
"Do you know, Miss Percival," he suddenly resumed, "do you know that you are here with Abraham Axtell, a man who has destroyed two lives: one slowly, surely, through years of suffering; the other, oh! the other—by a flash from God's wrath, and for eighteen years my soul has cried out to her, 'Thou art mine,' and yet there is no response on earth, there can be none? Would you know the name of my preserver that night, come,"—and, bending down, he offered his hand to assist me in rising.
I had no faith in this man's murderousness, whatever he might have done. He led me around to the head-stone of the grave which he had asked my knowledge of. Before I could see, he passed his hand across my eyes: how cold it was!
"When you see the name recorded here," he said, "you will know who saved me that August night, whom my terrible will destroyed, drinking her young life up in one fell cup."