"He might very likely have lived another hundred years!" he cried
involuntarily. Some diabolical influence had drawn him to his
father, and again he gazed at that luminous spark. The eyelid
closed and opened again abruptly; it was like a woman's sign of
assent. It was an intelligent movement. If a voice had cried
"Yes!" Don Juan could not have been more startled.

"What is to be done?" he thought.

He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.

"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with
himself.

"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.

"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!"
And he went closer to crush the thing. A great tear trickled over
the hollow cheeks, and fell on Don Juan's hand.

"It is scalding!" he cried. He sat down. The struggle exhausted
him; it was as if, like Jacob of old, he was wrestling with an
angel.

At last he rose. "So long as there is no blood----" he muttered.

Then, summoning all the courage needed for a coward's crime, he
extinguished the eye, pressing it with the linen cloth, turning
his head away. A terrible groan startled him. It was the poor
poodle, who died with a long-drawn howl.