“Léon Giron will never drive again,” Lescault repeated. “It’s sure? You’re certain of it?” he asked suddenly, clutching Stevenson’s sleeve. “It’s sure, isn’t it?” he begged.
Bewildered, Stevenson said that it was so. Then he felt his flesh creep, for the little Frenchman had begun to smile, a horrible smile, with a hideous face, changing expression in the fire’s glow; began to rub his one hand over his knee, to slide it up and down creepily and unpleasantly, like a snake at play; to leer, and gloat over disaster not like a man, but a beast.
Horrified, unable to understand, Stevenson slid silently from his chair and backed slowly from the room. At the door he stopped, hesitated, and, as though unwilling to believe, looked again at the hunched little figure in the chair. There came to him faintly the sound of a voice chuckling!
OFF CAPRI
BY SARA TEASDALE
WHEN beauty grows too great to bear,
How shall I ease me of its ache?
For beauty, more than bitterness,
Makes the heart break.