was lowered again, and the coil unwound from her ankle; then it
began to move away, slowly at first, and with the head a little
raised, then faster, and in the end it glided out of sight.
Gone!--but it had left its venom in my blood--O cursed reptile!

Back from watching its retreat, my eyes returned to her face, now
strangely clouded with trouble; her eyes dropped before mine,
while the palms of her hands were pressed together, and the
fingers clasped and unclasped alternately. How different she
seemed now; the brilliant face grown so pallid and vague-looking!
But not only because this tragic end to our meeting had pierced
her with pain: that cloud in the west had grown up and now
covered half the sky with vast lurid masses of vapour, blotting
out the sun, and a great gloom had fallen on the earth.

That sudden twilight and a long roll of approaching thunder,
reverberating from the hills, increased my anguish and
desperation. Death at that moment looked unutterably terrible.
The remembrance of all that made life dear pierced me to the
core--all that nature was to me, all the pleasures of sense and
intellect, the hopes I had cherished--all was revealed to me as
by a flash of lightning. Bitterest of all was the thought that I
must now bid everlasting farewell to this beautiful being I had
found in the solitude this lustrous daughter of the Didi--just
when I had won her from her shyness--that I must go away into the
cursed blackness of death and never know the mystery of her life!
It was that which utterly unnerved me, and made my legs tremble
under me, and brought great drops of sweat to my forehead, until
I thought that the venom was already doing its swift, fatal work
in my veins.