He would die.

Let him die that Lucille's honour, Lucille's happiness, Lucille's
welfare, might live--and he kissed the hilt of the Sword as he had so
often done in childhood. Having removed boots, leggings and socks, he
lay down on the settee--innocent of bedding and pillows, pulled over
him the coat that had been rolled and strapped trooper-fashion behind
the saddle and fell asleep....

And dreamed that he was shut naked in a tiny cell with a gigantic
python upon whose yard-long fangs he was about to be impaled and, as
usual, awoke trembling and bathed in perspiration, with dry mouth and
throbbing head, sickness, and tingling extremities.

The wind had got up and had blown out the candle which should have
lasted till dawn!...

As he lay shaking, terrified (uncertain as to whether he were a soul
in torment or a human being still alive), and debating as to whether
he could get off the couch, relight the candle, and close the windward
window, he heard a sound that caused his heart to miss a beat and his
hair to rise on end. A strange, dry rustle merged in the sound of
paper being dragged across the floor, and he knew that he _was_ shut
in with a snake, shut up in a _blue room_, cut off from the matches on
the table, and doomed to lie and await the Death he dreaded more than
ten thousand others--or, going mad, to rush upon that Death.

_He was shut in with the SNAKE_. At last it had come for him in its
own concrete form and had him bound and gagged by fascination and
fear--in the Dark, the awful cruel Dark. No more mere myrmidons. _The