The wave fell in red turmoil on the breakers. And still Gabrielle stood
alone above the body of Henri Durien; but the carbine was fallen from her
hands. She stood as one awaiting death, her eyes upon the unmoving form
at her feet. The soldiers watched her, but no one fired. Her face was
white; but in the eyes there was a wild triumph. She wanted death now;
but these French soldiers had not the heart to kill her.

When she saw that, she leaned and thrust a hand into the bleeding bosom
of Henri Durien, and holding it aloft cried: "For this blood men must
die." Stooping again she seized the carbine and levelled it at the
officer in command. Before she could pull the trigger some one fired,
and she fell across the body of her lover. A moment afterwards Shorland
stood beside her. She was shot through the lungs.

He stooped over her. "Gabrielle, Gabrielle!" he said. "Yes, yes,
I know--I saw you. This is the twenty-fifth. He will be married
to-morrow-Luke. I owed it to him to die; I owed it to Henri to die this
way." She drew the scarred portrait of Luke Freeman from her bosom and
gave it over.

"His eyes made me," she said. "They haunted me.

"Well, it is all done. I am sorry, ah! Never tell him of this. I go
away--away--with Henri."

She closed her eyes and was still for a moment; so still that he thought
her dead. But she looked up at him again and said with her last breath:
"I am--the Woman in the Morgue--always--now!"