If Ruffo had carried death in his boy's hand over the sea to the
island, had carried death to Hermione!
Artois tried to imagine that house without Hermione, his life without
Hermione.
For a long time he sat, always holding the death-charm in his hand,
always with his eyes fixed upon it, until at last in it, as in a magic
mirror, among the scars of its burning, and among the nails that
pierced it, as the woman who had fashioned it, and fired it, and
muttered witch's words over it, longed to pierce the heart of her
enemy, he saw scenes of the past, and shadowy, moving figures. He saw
among the scars and among the nails Hermione and himself!
They were in Paris, at a table strewn with flowers. That was the first
scene in the magic mirror of the /fattura della morte/, the scene in
which they met for the first time. Hermione regarded him almost with
timidity. And he looked at her doubtfully, because she had no beauty.
Then they were in another part of Paris, in his "Morocco slipper of a
room," crammed with books, and dim with Oriental incense and tobacco
smoke, his room red and yellow, tinted with the brilliant colors of
the East.
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