"Do it quickly!" she gasped.
"Hush!" His hand tightened on her throat. "If you were in Salta, you
should die by tenths of inches, if it took all night! That would be too
good for you."
He spat in her face as she writhed under his grasp. He looked into her
living eyes once more with all the cowardly hate that possessed him, he
struck deep and sure, he saw the light break in the pupils, and heard
the awful rattle of her last breath.
In an instant he was at the window, and had thrown it wide open. He got
out quickly, let himself down with his hands, and pushed himself away
from the wall with his feet as he jumped down backwards, well knowing
that there was grass below him, and that the earth was as soft as sponge
with the long rain. He was sure that he could not hurt himself. Yet
before his feet touched the ground he had uttered a low cry of fear.
He was on his legs now and trying to run, but it was too late. There was
the flash of a lantern in the wet garden, and between him and the light,
and just below it, he saw two points of greenish fire coming at him; for
he saw everything then; and he heard the rush of a heavy beast's feet,
tearing up the earth with iron claws, and the savage breath, and the
loud hiss of a man setting the creature on; for he heard every sound
then; and he knew that the thing of terror would leap up with resistless
strength and hurl its weight upon him, and bury its jagged fangs in his
throat and tear him, in an instant that would seem like an hour of
agony, and that the pain and the fear would be as if he were hung up by
all the nerves of his body, drawn out and twisted; for he knew
everything then; and in that immeasurable time which is nothing, and yet
is infinite, he remembered his evil life, his robberies, his murders,
and his betrayals, one by one, but he remembered with most frightful
clearness how he had tried to kill Marcello, how he had corrupted him
from his childhood, with bad counsels very cunningly, and prepared him
to go astray, how he had thrust evil in his path and laughed away the
good, and had led him on, and poisoned him, and would have brought him
to his death and damnation surely, but for one sinning devoted woman
that loved him; for he remembered everything then; and from very far
away, out of memories of his youth, there came a voice that had once
been gentle and kind, but that rang in his ears now, like the blast of
the trumpet of the last judgment.
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