Waiting alone in the gleaming, antiseptic operating theatre, with the burning shouts of the street hawkers wafting in from outside, Boris thought once more of Harold Cleveland, the soldier-lover of her youthful imaginings. He was now, according to the message on the dagger, recklessly endangering her life as well as his own.
   At that moment came a knock at the door, and she nearly swooned. He was here! “I love you with a fiery passion which cannot be denied, my giddy little goose!” he breathed in one frantic breath.
   Then, without any warning, he dabbed at her tears with the handkerchief she herself had made for him, and as the band began to play, she knew that at last he was hers — and that only death could part them.