blur of confusion wherein the sights and sounds of the last few hours
tore through his brain with the plunge of a wild galloping such as
seemed to have been in his ears for years and years.

But as he lay thus he heard a step at his side. Then came the touch of
Felice's long brown hand upon his face. He sat up, opening his eyes.

"You aisk me-a," she said, "eef I do onderstaind, eh? Yais, I
onderstaind. You--" her voice was a whisper--"you shoot Chino, eh? I
know. You do those thing' for me-a. I am note angri, no-a. You ver'
sharp man, eh? All for love oaf Felice, eh? Now we be happi, maybe; now
we git married soam day byne-by, eh? Ah, you one brave man, Signor
Lockwude!"

She would have taken his hand, but Lockwood, the pain all forgot, the
confusion all vanishing, was on his feet. It was as though a curtain
that for months had hung between him and the blessed light of clear
understanding had suddenly been rent in twain by her words. The woman
stood revealed. All the baseness of her tribe, all the degraded savagery
of a degenerate race, all the capabilities for wrong, for sordid
treachery, that lay dormant in her, leaped to life at this unguarded
moment, and in that new light, that now at last she had herself let in,
stood pitilessly revealed, a loathsome thing, hateful as malevolence
itself.

"What," shouted Lockwood, "you think--think that I--that I
_could_--oh-h, it's monstrous--_you_----" He could find no words to
voice his loathing. Swiftly he turned away from her, the last spark of
an evil love dying down forever in his breast.