For it was a Thing, and as she stood staring, with wild heaving breast, this she saw.
'Twas but a thing--a thing lying inert, its fair locks outspread, its eyes rolled upward till the blue was almost lost; a purple indentation on the right temple from which there oozed a tiny thread of blood.
* * * * * "There will be a way," she had said, and yet in her most mad despair, of this way she had never thought; though strange it had been, considering her lawless past, that she had not--never of this way--never! Notwithstanding which, in one frenzied moment in which she had known naught but her delirium, her loaded whip had found it for her--the way! And yet it being so found, and she stood staring, seeing what she had done--seeing what had befallen--'twas as if the blow had been struck not at her own temple but at her heart--a great and heavy shock, which left her bloodless, and choked, and gasping.
"What! what!" she panted.

"Nay! nay! nay!" and her eyes grew wide and wild.
She sank upon her knees, so shuddering that her teeth began to chatter.
She pushed him and shook him by the shoulder.
"Stir!" she cried in a loud whisper.

"Move thee! Why dost thou lie so?
Stir!" Yet he stirred not, but lay inert, only with his lips drawn back, showing his white teeth a little, as if her horrid agony made him begin to laugh.
Shuddering, she drew slowly nearer, her eyes more awful than his own.

Her hand crept shaking to his wrist and clutched it.

There was naught astir--naught! It stole to his breast, and baring it, pressed close.
That was still and moveless as his pulse; for life was ended, and a hundred mouldering years would not bring more of death.
"I have _killed_ thee," she breathed.