And while he whispered between his set lips, “Sleep, my beloved, sleep,” her little head dropped back against his arm with a long, peaceful sigh.

He held her form tenderly to his heart, murmuring senseless, meaningless words of comfort and love, like a mother crooning her babe to sleep.  And he still clasped her there till the new day peeped through the blinds.  And the storm raged at intervals with all the ferocity of unspent passion.  But his passion was over now, and he laughed a savage laugh of triumph.

No one could take her from him now—­no one!  His darling was his—­his wife—­in life and in death!

He laid her down upon the bed and arranged the blankets over her tenderly, hiding the hideous, gaping wound, with its unceasing flow; carefully from sight.  He closed her eyes, kissing them as he did so, and folded her little white hands together, and then he pulled out the disarranged lace at her throat and smoothed it mechanically, till it lay quite to his satisfaction.  Opal was so fastidious, he thought—­so particular about these little niceties of dress.  She would like to look well when they found her—­dear Heaven!—­to-morrow!

“No to-morrow!” he thought.  They had spoken more wisely than they knew.  There would be no to-morrow for her—­nor for him!

There was a tiny spot of blood upon the frill of her sleeve, and he carefully turned it under, out of sight.  He looked at the ugly stains upon his own garments with a thrill of satisfaction.  She was his!  Was it not quite right and proper that her blood should be upon him?

But even then, frenzied as he was, he had a singular care for appearances, a curious regard for detail, and busied himself in removing all signs of his presence from her chamber—­all tell-tale traces of the storm of passion that swept away her life—­and his!  He felt himself already but the ghost of his former self, and laughed a weird, half-mad laugh at the thought as it came to him.

He bent over her again.  He would have given much to have lain down beside her and slept his last sleep in her cold, lifeless arms.  But no!  Even this was denied him!

He wound a tress of her hair about his fingers, and it clung and twined there as her white fingers had been wont to twine.  Oh, the pity of her stillness—­her silence—­who was never still nor silent—­never indifferent to his presence!  She looked so like a sleeping child in her whiteness and tranquillity, her red-brown hair in disordered waves about her head, her eyes closed in the last long sleep.  And he wept as he pressed his burning lips to hers, so cold, so pitifully cold, and for the first time unresponsive.  Oh, God, unresponsive forever!

“Poor little girl!” he moaned, between sobs of hopeless pain.  “Poor little passionate girl!...  Poor little tired Opal!”

And with a dry sob of unutterable anguish, he picked up the dagger—­the cruel, kind little dagger—­and crept to his own room.