Death brooded over the city that night; I felt His presence everywhere,--in the streets that were silent as the grave itself; in those whence the dead were being removed; most of all where men and women laughed and sang and defied Him! But I felt the dread Presence in a curious detached fashion. Death was my enemy indeed, an enemy who would not strike, who passed me by as one beneath contempt! And always, clear before my eyes, in my ears, above all other sights and sounds, I saw Anne's face, heard her voice. Now she stood before me as I had first known her,--a radiant, queenly vision; a girl whose laughing eyes showed never a care in the world, or a thought beyond the passing moment. Her hands were full of flowers, red flowers, red as blood. Why, it was blood; it was staining her fingers, dripping from them! Yet the man didn't see it; that man with the dark eager face, who was standing beside her, who took a spray of the flowers from her hand. What a fool this Cassavetti is not to know that she is "_La Mort!_"
Now she is changed; she wears a black gown, and the red flowers have vanished; but she is lovelier, more queenly than ever, as she looks at me with wide, pathetic eyes, and says, "I have deceived you!"
Again she stands, with hands outstretched, and cries, "The end is in sight; thank God for all His mercies;" and her face is as that of an angel in Heaven.
But always there is a barrier between her and me; a barrier impalpable yet unpassable. I try to surmount it, but I am beaten back every time. Now it is Cassavetti who confronts me; again, and yet again, it is Loris, with his stern white face, his inscrutable blue eyes. He is on horseback; he rides straight at me, and he bears something in his arms.
I struggled up and looked around me. I knew the place well enough, the long narrow room that had once been the _salle à manger_ in the Vassilitzi's Warsaw house, but that, ever since I had known it, had been the principal ward in the amateur hospital instituted by Anne. A squalid ward enough, for the beds were made up on the floor, anyhow, and every bit of space was filled, leaving just a narrow track for the attendants to pass up and down.
Along that track came a big figure that I recognized at once as Mishka, walking with clumsy caution.