"
"But if I'm sure the room is empty, sir, and get no answer--?"
"Then you may enter any room but this. Never this, unless I am here--or Mr.
Karslake is--and you get leave."
"'Nk you, sir."
"Good-night."
As the door closed Victor extended a thin, effeminate hand to a casket of
ivory, searched with sensitive finger-tips its exquisite tracery until a
cunningly hidden spring responded and the lid, splitting in two, sank down
into its walls. In the pocket thus revealed were many pills, apparently
hand-moulded, of a grayish-brown substance, putty-soft.
Slowly Victor selected three, placed one after another upon his tongue, and
swallowed them.
He shut the casket and sat waiting.
Slowly the keenness of his countenance became blurred, as if the hand of an
unseen sculptor were rubbing down its features, doing away the veneer with
which Europe had overlaid the primitive Asiatic, which now showed on the
surface, in every detail of coarsely modelled nose, oblique eyes of animal
cunning, pendulous lips cruel and sensual.
By degrees a faint trace of colour began to flush Victor's cheeks, a smile
modified the set of his mouth, the heavy-lidded eyes lost their lustreless
opacity and glimmered with uncanny light.
He breathed deeply, evenly, with an evident relish. The action of the opium
was visibly renewing his powers. His expression, softening, became terrible
with brute tenderness and longing. Gazing into shadows in which he saw that
which he wished ardently to see, he stretched forth his arms, and his lips
moved, shaping a name:
"Sofia!"
As those syllables, freighted with that undying passion which consumed the
man, sounded upon the stillness, Victor turned sharply, with a gesture of
irritation, looking aside, listening.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124