"
Then Asti knelt down by the pool, and bent her head, and stretched out
her hands over the water, and Tua touched the strings of her harp and
began to chant very solemnly in an unknown tongue. The words of that
chant were low and sweet, yet it seemed to Janees that they fell like
ice upon his hot blood, and froze it within his veins. At first he kept
his eyes fixed upon her beauty, but by slow degrees something drew them
down to the water of the pool.
Look! A mist gathered on its blackness. It broke and cleared and there,
as in a mirror, he saw a picture. He saw himself lying stripped and
dead, a poor, naked corpse with wide eyes that stared to heaven, and
gashed throat and sides whence the blood ran upon the marble floor of
his own great hall, ruined by fire, with its scorched pillars pointing
like fingers to the moon. There he lay alone, and by him stood a hound,
his own hound, that lifted up its head and seemed to howl.
The last words of Tua's chant died away, and with them that picture
passed.
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