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The Duke, who had kept his right hand on his dagger-hilt while he held Christian's collar with his left, unloosed it as he spoke, but slowly, and as one who rather suspends than abandons the execution of some hasty impulse; while Christian, adjusting his cloak with perfect composure, said, "Soh my cloak being at liberty, we speak on equal terms.
But, when I turned and peered through the right-hand inner door I saw, across the marble center-table, horridly sprawled, what I instantly knew for his corpse, so unmistakably did the head hang loose, the arms dangle, the legs trail: he was manifestly a corpse, even without sight of the dagger-hilt projecting from his back. I rushed to him and touched him.
There was a horrid semblance of life in the light, a palpitating, breathing glow, and my pulses beat in time to it, till I seemed to be drawing it into my veins. It had no warmth, and as it entered my blood my heart grew colder, and my muscles more rigid. My fingers clutched the dagger-hilt till its jeweled roughness pressed painfully into my palm.
Such glittering of gold-embroidered mantles, such bewildering confusion of colors, such flashing of jewelry from cap and dagger-hilt and finger-ring, and even from bridle and stirrup, testified that the male sex at this period in Italy were no whit behind the daughters of Eve in that passion for personal adornment which our age is wont to consider exclusively feminine.
To-morrow would be Friday, the day of the weekly sacrifice; they could make the trial then. It was hard upon noon of the following day when the two women drew near to the temple of the Shining One. Nanna, clad in doublet and small-clothes, swung jauntily along, one hand on dagger-hilt and careless challenge in her snapping, black eyes, the picture of a swaggering younker.
As she explained all this to me, she pointed to the decorations on her golden armlets, upon the knob of her dagger-hilt and upon the band which encircled her right leg above the knee always was the design partly made up of isosceles triangles, and when she explained the significance of this particular geometric figure, I at once grasped its appropriateness.
A gasp showed he was hit; then he clinched my throat once more. Sight went from me, and hearing. "It is no use," I thought, and then thought went, too. But once again the saints were kind to me. The blackness passed, and I wondered what had happened that I was spared. Then I saw Grammont clutching with both hands at the dagger-hilt. After all, the blow had gone home.
Soon, another party of villagers appeared, headed by another young man, who was quite the counterpart of the first, even to the scar in his lip; but his dagger-hilt and sheath were of solid silver, set with precious stones, and the long ringlets which hung upon his shoulders, were still more daintily curled.
"Then," said Thorndyke, "we will not disturb the body till he comes, except to take the temperature and dust the dagger-hilt." He took from his bag a long, registering chemical thermometer and an insufflator or powder-blower.
"What sayest thou, Sah-luma?" he demanded in a sort of ferocious gasping whisper ... "Repeat thy words! ... Repeat them!" ... and his hand clutched at his dagger-hilt, while his restless, lowering glance flashed from Lysia to the Laureate and from the Laureate back to Lysia again.. "Death encompasses us, . . this is no time for trifling! ... Speak!".. and his voice suddenly rose to a frantic shout of rage, "Speak!
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