The Mystery of a Turkish Bath Part 13

"Cold!" Mrs Jefferson stared. "I guess it's as well I came here first," she said, "for certainly I can't stand it 50 degrees hotter than it is at present. I'll go into the second room. You see I'm reversing the usual order this morning. Three, two, one, instead of one, two, three. I'll sit just here by the door, so that we can still talk if you wish. I look like a boiled lobster, I'm sure."

Princess Zairoff said nothing. But when the American had withdrawn, she threw herself down on a couch near the wall. By choosing it she was out of sight of anyone in the adjoining room, though able to converse if she wished.

That she did not wish was very evident. No sooner was she alone than an expression of intense anguish came over her face. Her hands locked themselves together, an agony far beyond the weakness of tears was in her beautiful eyes.

"I have lost him," she cried, in a stifled whisper. "Lost him for ever... and it was for this we were brought together... For this I was commanded to learn the secret of my failure. Yes, I, who thought myself so wise, have failed... Failed at the crucial test, because my pa.s.sions governed me... because my heart was weak, for sake of love... Oh, my lost strength--my lost self-restraint... Must I again tread the weary road... and only overcome to fail again?"

She turned aside and hid her face in her hands, while all that dusky veil of rippling hair fell over her like a cloud.

"I am so human still," she moaned--"so human that, woman-like, I deceived myself, and dreamt of love perfected here, when I might have known--I might have known... But, oh, to lose him thus! To stand before his eyes shamed, sin-stricken, criminal--I cannot bear that--it is beyond my strength..."

A new fierce pa.s.sion seemed suddenly to take possession of her soul.

She raised herself once more, and the old lovely light and splendour glowed in her eyes.

"There is but one way to win his forgiveness," she cried breathlessly.

"He will pity me then... his heart will soften... he will remember what I said on that strange happy night when once again we met... I am but a woman who loves. Earth holds no weaker thing... and I loved you, Julian... you only--you alone! always--always--always. Men live for love--a woman can but die. For the life I took I give my own--it is just... Yet if but once, oh, beloved, I could see your pitying eyes, and hear your tender voice... and know that you--forgave..."

The light faded from her face once more. Only a hunted, despairing creature leaned back on that solitary couch.

A voice came shrilly from the outer room: "Are you all right, Princess?

Can you really bear that heat?"

Monotonously--vaguely--her own voice replied: "I am all right--I do not even feel the heat."

Then, all again grew still, and her eyes closed, and her heart beat in a dull, laboured way.

Once more the shrill voice reached her; but it sounded far off, and indistinct: "I hope you won't go off to sleep, like you did the last time, Princess; you frightened me terribly."

The effort to reply was harder to make; yet once again the slow, sweet voice vibrated through the hushed and stifling heat:

"I shall not sleep--do not be alarmed."

Five minutes later, when Mrs Ray Jefferson lifted her eyes from an examination of her suffering foot, she was surprised to see the Princess standing in the archway of the further room, exactly as she had done on the first occasion of her visiting the Baths.

"Are you going?" she called out. "How is it I never saw you pa.s.s through the room?"

There was no answer--only the deep, wonderful eyes looked mournfully back at her, and, even as she met the gaze, the form seemed to fade away--the archway was vacant.

With a faint cry, Mrs Jefferson sprang to her feet, and rushed into the inner room. The intense heat stifled, and drove her back; but not before she saw the Princess lying on the couch, where she had left her... lying with closed eyes and folded hands; while on her pale, sad lips a faint smile seemed still to shed its lingering life.

The frantic calls of the terrified woman summoned the attendants. In a moment, that motionless figure was lifted and carried into the adjoining chamber.

But human science and human aid were powerless before a greater Mystery than the Princess Zairoff had embodied. The "Mystery of Death!"

THE END.