What Was Behind the Mask

The cowering form rose up; but, seeing who it was, sank down again, with
its face groveling in the dust, and with another prolonged, moaning cry.

"Madame Masque!" he said, wonderingly; "what is this?"

He bent to raise her; but, with a sort of scream she held out her arms
to keep him back.

"No, no, no I Touch me not! Hate me--kill me! I have murdered your
friend!"

Sir Norman recoiled as if from a deadly tent.

"Murdered him! Madame, in Heaven's name, what have you said?"

"Oh, I have not stabbed him, or poisoned him, or shot him; but I am
his murderer, nevertheless!" she wailed, writhing in a sort of gnawing
inward torture.

"Madame, I do not understand you at all! Surely you are raving when you
talk like this."

Still moaning on the edge of the plague-pit, she half rose up, with both
hands clasped tightly over her heart, as if she would have held back
from all human ken the anguish that was destroying her, "NO--no! I am not mad--pray Heaven I were! Oh, that they had strangled
me in the first hour of my birth, as they would a viper, rather than I
should have lived through all this life of misery and guilt, to end it
by this last, worst crime of all!"

Sir Norman stood and looked at her still with a dazed expression. He
knew well enough whose murderer she called herself; but why she did
so, or how she could possibly bring about his death, was a mystery
altogether too deep for him to solve.