the wood-work cracking in the coridors. A thin smoke began to fill the room, the perfume in the idol grew ranker, with a sulphurous smell; little jets of flame filtered through the strong trap-door.
"I—I have confidence in Jorgon" stammered Paul-Eric naively.
"Jorgon is dead—at least I hope so, for his sake," replied the elder brother, rocking the lad to and fro in his arms, against his broad chest. "Burns, dearest, are not really very painful—just press your nails here and there along my shoulder, and I shall not feel any thing that hurts. Why, it's enough only to think of something else—of my love."
Reutler did not cease smiling; he was perfectly happy.
"Oh, you seem to be very well entertained" cried Paul, starting up in terror. "But take care to eittertain me, or I shall call for help! Oh, I—I—am choking—I am going to be afraid—I am going to be afraid! Reutler, do something to make me lose my reason! I am afraid of being afraid—don't you understand?"
With a vehement gesture, the young man tore away the silk from his bosom. The white skin—those two points of rose—they piqued the eyes of the tall Hercules who, looked down at them, with a strange look.
"That is what Marie did!" he murmured, with a sigh. ".. Look here, Eric, you are not behaving well. Real beauty, real, isn't—that!" Reutler held up the robe around the young man's haunches, that it might not slip downward; then he carefully drew up the folds of what was to be so elegant a winding-sheet, draped it about the lad's bosom; and finally put his hands about that slender throat. Eric's face turned away from his own. "Yes—I love you! Don't call anyone, for it is useless! Dont think of anything now, except of the happiness it is that we are together—free. Put your head closer to mine. My agony will be much more terrible than yours—but I shall be looking all, the longer at you, and I shall not feel the other burning. Do you remember, Eric, my boy, the words 'I have made Nature herself the scene for my Will?' Look me straight in the face! Open your eyes wider—kiss me, for I want to drink-in your very soul. Yes—we are gods …!"
Only the first pressure of those powerful hands!—Reutler had strangled him.
The mad force of the flames forced up the trap-door; one single, enormous red flame mounted up, as if to devour the very sky.
"Too late, my little sister!" cried out Reutler proudly, to the fire, "I am still master in my own house!" And his calm face— 340 —
