once it whinnied. The coachman lighted his pipe and watched his dying
fare. Some wag sang a drunken lyric, and Ambroise repeated at
intervals:--

"Please not so close, Messieurs. She needs air." Then she moved her head
and murmured:

"Where's--my Prince? My--Prince Ambroise--I have something--" Her head
fell back on his shoulder with a rigid jerk. In her clenched fingers he
recognized his purse--smudged, torn, the serpent mouth gaping, the eyes
empty.... And for the last time Ambroise saw scarlet--saw scarlet
double. His two personalities had separated, never to merge again.




IV

REBELS OF THE MOON

"On my honour, friend," Zarathustra answered, "what thou speakest
of doth not exist: there is no devil nor hell. Thy soul will be
dead even sooner than thy body: henceforth fear naught."


The moon, a spiritual gray wafer, fainted in the red wind of a summer
morning as the two men leaped a ditch soft with mud. The wall was not
high, the escape an easy one. Crouching, their clothes the colour of
clay, they trod cautiously the trench, until opposite a wood whose trees
blackened the slow dawn. Then, without a word, they ran across the road,