She clasped his hand harder, and looked at him pityingly, as if he were the injured one, and went on.
"I felt my strength fading away, and I was in a half swoon.

How long this horrible thing lasted I know not, but it seemed that a long time must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away.
I saw it drip with the fresh blood!" The remembrance seemed for a while to overpower her, and she drooped and would have sunk down but for her husband's sustaining arm.

With a great effort she recovered herself and went on.
"Then he spoke to me mockingly, 'And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine.

You would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my design! You know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path.

They should have kept their energies for use closer to home.
Whilst they played wits against me, against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born, I was countermining them.