Mansel put up a hand and touched her hair.
“I found my strength in your nature, in the light of your steady, brown eyes and the flash of your smile: in your beautiful voice and your laughter and the play of your little hands: in the lisp of your footfalls and, at last, in the brush of your lips … You gave me my strength, my darling: and the spirit that lighted my life can light its own. Two days ago in this room you made me a king—of your own sweet will, though Death had his ear to the keyhole, and Terror his eyes on the latch. That’s not the way of fear.”
“But you were with me, Jonah. I tell you, with you to lean on, I knew no fear.”
“A fiction, my beauty, a fiction. You mustn’t bow down to an image that you set up. It wasn’t I that set the stars in your eyes or gave that fine, proud curve to your beautiful mouth. Adèle was a great lady, before ever she heard my name. So lift up your head, in the old familiar way. Look Fate in the eyes, my darling, and he’ll always give you the wall.”
Adèle seemed to brace herself. Then she took his hand and kissed it and held it against her heart.
“I’ll try,” she said quietly. “If Tester will let me, I’ll do what I can to help him; and, as soon as we’ve got our bearings, Tester and I will try.”
I saw the dog’s ears lift, but he never stirred.
“Poor little chap,” said Mansel. “I’m afraid it’ll hit him hard.”
Then he spoke to the scrap and told him that he must look after Adèle and that soon he was to be her dog, “for you see, old fellow,” he murmured, “I’ve got to go away. And it’s not like the other times, for this time … I shan’t come back.”
A tremor ran through the dog’s frame, and he gave a little whimper that wrung my heart. As plainly as if he had spoken, he was acknowledging the sentence which the man that he worshipped had passed. Devotion so piteous and so absolute would have drawn tears from any stone, and I was not surprised when beneath this turn of the roller Adèle broke down.
She slipped from the bed to the floor, buried her face in her hands and shook like a leaf.
“I can’t face it,” she said wildly. “Three days ago I could have done it, but now it’s too late. Two days ago the face of my world was changed. We changed it together, Jonah, you and I. But, when we changed it, we set a yoke on our necks. … I wouldn’t go back for fifty million worlds—our yoke’s my pride and glory, the loveliest jewel that ever a woman wore. They were going to tattoo me, Jonah—to write your name on my back. I wish to God they’d done it: but it wouldn’t have been the same as the yoke we put on together two days ago. And now I’ve got to carry … our yoke … alone. … Between us, its weight was nothing. It had no weight. Day and night I’d have worn it, and life would have been the lighter because it was there. But alone, Jonah … alone. How can I lift up my head, with a millstone about my neck? How can I lift up my heart, when my fellow is gone?”
Great beads of sweat were standing on Mansel’s brow: but his voice, though low, was steady as it had ever been.
“ ‘The one shall be taken,’ ” he said, “ ‘and the other left.’ That is the private touchstone of the great Alchemist himself. Only the greatest hearts come to be put to such a shining proof, and those that pass it, my lady, emerge so tempered that no blow can ever dent them and they can turn the edge of any sorrow.”
Adèle dragged herself up and knelt to the bed: as she leaned over blindly, Mansel put his arm round her neck. …
And then, for a while, there was silence, and the whisper of the water, taking its leap from the terrace, was all the sound we heard.
Tester lifted his head and looked at the wall.
At first I could hear nothing: then came a step in the passage, and, an instant later, Hanbury opened the door.
As he looked at the bed—
“Ah, George,” said Mansel, and smiled.
Hanbury glanced behind him, and a tall, fresh-faced man came into the room.
“This is Dr. Buchinger,” said George. “He is an Innsbruck surgeon, who happened to be at Lass.”
The other bowed to Adèle: then he stepped to the bed.
I was just in time to catch Tester, who would have flown at his throat, but the surgeon ignored the flurry and, frowning a little at the bloodstain upon the quilt, stooped to set his fingers on Mansel’s wrist.
There was a breathless silence.
Then he took a case from his pocket and straightened his back.
“I must give an injection,” he said. “Please see if the room is ready and bring a shutter or something on which you may carry him in.”
“You see,” said George, “it was like this. I knew it was a chance in a million, but there was the car waiting, and the bookseller ready to
