"Can't you wait until dark?" asked Clayton. "Miss Porter must not
see this thing done. We were to have been married, you know."

A look of disappointment came over Monsieur Thuran's face.

"Very well," he replied hesitatingly. "It will not be long until
night. I have waited for many days--I can wait a few hours longer."

"Thank you, my friend," murmured Clayton. "Now I shall go to her
side and remain with her until it is time. I would like to have
an hour or two with her before I die."

When Clayton reached the girl's side she was unconscious--he knew
that she was dying, and he was glad that she should not have to
see or know the awful tragedy that was shortly to be enacted. He
took her hand and raised it to his cracked and swollen lips. For
a long time he lay caressing the emaciated, clawlike thing that had
once been the beautiful, shapely white hand of the young Baltimore
belle.

It was quite dark before he knew it, but he was recalled to himself
by a voice out of the night. It was the Russian calling him to
his doom.

"I am coming, Monsieur Thuran," he hastened to reply.

Thrice he attempted to turn himself upon his hands and knees, that
he might crawl back to his death, but in the few hours that he had
lain there he had become too weak to return to Thuran's side.