“You have not entered the People’s House for seven years until tonight. Do you think we have forgotten that you exist? Do you think we have not wondered why the master of the world has left us to the whims of that fat old man? Sit by me, Sanson. Do you not see how you have toiled while Lembken has taken his ease? You have waited so long for one woman. Oh, yes, I know; all a great man’s secrets are known everywhere, though he thinks them in sanctuary, securely guarded. You can take her—but take us too. Live your life, Sanson! Save us and reign over us! Take me, Sanson—”
I heard the man breathe as if in a trance. That strange pity which he inspired in me awoke again. All the long tragedy of his life, the vigil of five and thirty years, the love that must prove vain—I realized it all. For this vain love he had ensnared the world, and now the world leaped at him to ensnare him. Devil as he was, in will his life had been, in one respect, a hero’s.
“Drink with me, Sanson,” I heard Amaranth murmur. “You do not know the taste of wine. A pledge to our love. A pledge to our lives!”
She was conquering. The tyrant of the world was almost prostrate at the feet of this girl of twenty years. Attila’s fate was to be his. I heard him groan in bitterness of conflict.
Amaranth clapped twice. Instantly the girl Coral stooped down, pushing me fiercely from the door, and, taking up the tray, went in. Amaranth took the brimming winecup and touched it with her lips.
“Drink, Sanson!” she murmured.
I was watching them now. I saw Sanson rise and raise the cup in his hand. He did not drink, neither did he reject it, but stood like one in a daze, all movement inhibited by the fierceness of that inner struggle. Amaranth seized the second cup from the tray, leaped from the couch, and raised it on high.
“To our love, Sanson!” she cried, and drained it.
At that moment the jagged cut on the girl Coral’s face grew red with blood again.
Coral stood holding the tray, and she looked at Amaranth and smiled. She stood like a tinted statue.