“Hast thou never seen its counterpart?” she asked, panting breathlessly.
“Yea,” I answered, with bated breath. “Of a verity the coincidence astoundeth me.”
The sight caused me to marvel greatly; I was bewildered, for it conjured up a thought that was horrible. In the exact centre of her delicate chest, immediately above her heaving bosom, was a strange, dark red mark of curious shape, deeply branded into the white flesh, as if at some time or other it had been seared by a red-hot iron. The paleness of the flesh and the firm contour of her bosom rendered the indelible mark the more hideous, but its position and its shape dumbfounded me. The strange blemish constituted an inexplicable mystery.
It was unaccountable, incredible. I stood agape, staring at it with wide-open, wondering eyes, convinced that its discovery was precursory of revelations startling and undreamed-of.
The mark, about the length of the little finger, and perfectly defined, was shaped to represent two serpents with heads facing each other, their writhing bodies intertwined in double curves.
In itself this mystic brand was hideous enough, but to me it had a significance deeper and more amazing, for in the centre of my own chest I bore a mark exactly identical in every detail!
For years; nay, ever since I had known myself, the red scar, not so noticeable upon my brown, sun-tanned skin as upon Azala’s pale, delicate breast, had been one of the mysteries of my life. Vividly I remembered how, in my early youth, in far El-Manäa I had sought an explanation of my parents, but they would never vouchsafe any satisfactory reply. On what occasion, or for what purpose the mysterious brand had been placed upon me I knew not. Vaguely I believed that it had been impressed as a means of identification at my birth, and until this moment had been fully convinced that I alone bore the strangely-shaped device. Judge, then, my abject astonishment to find a similar mark, evidently impressed by the identical seal, upon the breast of the woman who had thus exerted her ingenuity to save my life—the woman whose grace and marvellous beauty had captivated me, the woman who had admitted that she reciprocated my affection.
In that brief moment I remembered well the strange, ambiguous reply that my mother had given me when, as a lad, my natural curiosity had been aroused,—
“Sufficient for thee to know that the Mark of the Asps is upon thee, O my son. Seek not to discover its significance until thou meetest with its exact counterpart. Then strive night and day to learn the truth, for if thou canst elucidate the mystery, thine ears will listen to strange things, and thine eyes will behold wondrous and undreamed-of marvels.”
Since then, twenty long years had elapsed, and I had wandered far and near, in England, in France, in Algeria and across the Great Desert. Both my parents had died with the strange secret still locked in their hearts, for by no amount of ingenious questioning could I succeed in unloosing their tongues. Now, however, my mother’s prophetic utterance and counsel, spoken in our white house on the green hillside, came back vividly to my memory, and I gazed in silence at Azala full of apprehensive thoughts.