them in my dead body! My blood is on you! My murder shall give him the proofs he needs!"
She cried again for help in the same ear-piercing screech; and, before I could devise her meaning, she turned the blade against herself, plunged it into her own heart, and, with a last half-finished scream, fell to the floor with a sickening thud.
In an instant I saw the method in her madness. The General had seen me in the room; he was now unconscious; there was no witness of her self-murder; my hand was streaming with the blood from the gashes of her knife; it was in my house it happened; her screams for help must have been heard outside. The suggestive proofs that I had slain her were enough to convince anyone of my guilt, and in another moment I should have the General's men thundering at the door, not only to stop my flight, but to have me denounced as a murderer.
Surely never was a man in a more desperate plight, and for the moment I knew not in my desperation what to do.
A glance at General Kolfort showed me he was still unconscious, and I rushed to him and shook him in the frenzy of my despair. But he gave no sign of returning consciousness, and the white face rolled from side to side as the head shook nervelessly on the limp, flaccid neck.
I clenched my hands and breathed hard in my concentrated efforts to think coherently and form some plan of action, and I cursed aloud in my wrath the fiend of a woman who had brought me to this pass of peril. I had no thought for her, dead though she was, but wild, raging, impotent hate.
Mere flight was no use. If I were charged with this
