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But other sovereigns who are my friends and neighbours, live, as it were, under the dagger's point, with dynamite at their feet and pistols at their heads, all for no fault of their own, but for the faults of a system which they did not formulate. Conspirators on the threshold poison in the air, as in Russia, for example! where is the joy or the pride of being a King nowadays?"
Why, the thing is easy so thou rest true to thyself, and let no womanish fears creep into thy heart. What is this dagger's thrust? It is nothing, and yet upon it hang the destinies of Egypt and the world." "Hush!" I said. "What is that? I hear a sound." Charmion ran to the door, and, gazing down the long, dark passage, listened. In a moment she came back, her finger on her lips.
In that instant he had caught the white arm in his two strong hands, staying the fatal blow, so that the dagger's point but struck against the ruby cross and did no harm. The scuffling of feet, the clatter of the dagger upon the floor, and the woman's cry of alarmed surprise awoke the king. Starting from his seat he caught his assailant and held her in the light of the moon.
As he stooped for them, he saw that one was an English journal some weeks old. His own name caught his eye the name buried so utterly, whose utterance in the Sheik's tent had struck him like a dagger's thrust.
"Why placest thou thy hand within thy robe?" she asked presently; for, indeed, I clutched the dagger's hilt. "Is thy heart stirred?" "Yea, O Queen," I said; "it beats high." She gave no answer, but once more made pretence to read, and the while she watched me. I took counsel with myself. How should I do the hateful deed? If I flung myself upon her now she would see me and scream and struggle.
"Alas," said the sorceress, "had I known that it was for you I was giving this poison, I would have received in my breast the dagger's point, with which I was threatened, and would have sacrificed my poor life to save that of a man of God, and of the sweetest woman that ever blossomed on this earth; for alas! my dear friend, I have only two drops of the counter-poison that you see in this phial."
I suffered as we do in dreams, intensely, exquisitely, when every nerve is unsheathed, and the spirit naked to the dagger's stroke. He stopped as he uttered this impassioned adjuration, and his countenance changed instantaneously as he gazed on mine. "Cruel, cruel that I am!" he cried, sitting down by me, and wrapping his arms around me; "I did not know what I was saying.
All in a tone of cool and heartless civility, every word of which was a dagger's thrust not only into her vanity, but into the poor little bit of a real heart which fashionable life had left to Lillie. Every evening, after he had gone, came a long, confidential conversation with Mrs.
What penalty had not my infatuation and cruelty deserved? What could I less than turn the dagger's point against my own bosom? A second time, the blow was thwarted and diverted. Once more this beneficent interposer held my arm from the perpetration of a new iniquity.
"I have been over-patient with her. I have counted too much upon the chance of Florimond's being dead, as seemed from the utter lack of news of him. Yet what could I do? Carry her off by force and compel at the dagger's point some priest to marry us?" She moved her hand from his shoulder and smiled, as if she derided him and his heat. "You want for invention, Marius," said she.
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