"Thou art a murderess; she loved me."
Observe, he was already forgetting that he had loved her.
"It is naught," she murmured, and her voice sounded sweet as the
night-wind passing through the trees. "It is naught at all. If I have
sinned, let my beauty answer for my sin. If I have sinned, it is for
love of thee: let my sin, therefore, be put away and forgotten;" and
once more she stretched out her arms and whispered "_Come_," and then in
another few seconds it was all over.
I saw him struggle--I saw him even turn to fly; but her eyes drew
him more strongly than iron bonds, and the magic of her beauty and
concentrated will and passion entered into him and overpowered him--ay,
even there, in the presence of the body of the woman who had loved him
well enough to die for him. It sounds horrible and wicked enough, but he
should not be too greatly blamed, and be sure his sin will find him out.
The temptress who drew him into evil was more than human, and her beauty
was greater than the loveliness of the daughters of men.
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