His Kingdom

Count Hannibal could not have said why he did not speak to her at once.
Warned by an instinct vague and ill-understood, he remained silent, his
eyes riveted on her, until she rose from the floor. A moment later she
met his gaze, and he looked to see her start. Instead, she stood quiet
and thoughtful, regarding him with a kind of sad solemnity, as if she saw
not him only, but the dead; while first one tremor and then a second
shook her frame.

At length "It is over!" she whispered. "Patience, Monsieur; have no
fear, I will be brave. But I must give a little to him."

"To him!" Count Hannibal muttered, his face extraordinarily, pale.

She smiled with an odd passionateness. "Who was my lover!" she cried,
her voice a-thrill. "Who will ever be my lover, though I have denied
him, though I have left him to die! It was just. He who has so tried me
knows it was just! He whom I have sacrificed--he knows it too, now! But
it is hard to be--just," with a quavering smile. "You who take all may
give him a little, may pardon me a little, may have--patience!"

Count Hannibal uttered a strangled cry, between a moan and a roar. A
moment he beat the coverlid with his hands in impotence. Then he sank
back on the bed.