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At the Castle, Desdemona was in a sad mood. She told Emilia that she must leave her; her husband wished it. “Dismiss me!” exclaimed Emilia. “It was his bidding, said Desdemona; we must not displease him now.”

She sang a song which a girl had sung whose lover had been base to her–a song of a maiden crying by that tree whose boughs droop as though it weeps, and she went to bed and slept.

She woke with her husband’s wild eyes upon her. “Have you prayed to-night?” he asked; and he told this blameless and sweet woman to ask God’s pardon for any sin she might have on her conscience. “I would not kill thy soul,” he said.

He told her that Cassio had confessed, but she knew Cassio had nought to confess that concerned her. She said that Cassio could not say anything that would damage her. Othello said his mouth was stopped.

Then Desdemona wept, but with violent words, in spite of all her pleading, Othello pressed upon her throat and mortally hurt her.

Then with boding heart came Emilia, and besought entrance at the door, and Othello unlocked it, and a voice came from the bed saying, “A guiltless death I die.”

“Who did it?” cried Emilia; and the voice said, “Nobody–I myself. Farewell!”

“‘Twas I that killed her,” said Othello.

He poured out his evidence by that sad bed to the people who came running in, Iago among them; but when he spoke of the handkerchief, Emilia told the truth.

And Othello knew. “Are there no stones in heaven but thunderbolts?” he exclaimed, and ran at Iago, who gave Emilia her death-blow and fled.

But they brought him back, and the death that came to him later on was a relief from torture.

They would have taken Othello back to Venice to try him there, but he escaped them on his sword. “A word or two before you go,” he said to the Venetians in the chamber. “Speak of me as I was–no better, no worse. Say I cast away the pearl of pearls, and wept with these hard eyes; and say that, when in Aleppo years ago I saw a Turk beating a Venetian, I took him by the throat and smote him thus.”

With his own hand he stabbed himself to the heart; and ere he died his lips touched the face of Desdemona with despairing love.