Part 20 (1/2)

The sobbing broke forth again.

”Did--did his eyes look as if he had been crying? He did cry--he did!”

The Head of the House of Coombe showed no muscular facial sign of emotion and stood stiffly still. But what was this which leaped scalding to his glazed eyes and felt hot?

”Yes,” he answered huskily. ”I saw--even as he marched past--that his eyes were heavy and had circles round them. There were other eyes like his--some were boys' eyes and some were the eyes of men. They held their heads up--but they had all said 'Good-bye'--as he had.”

The Wood echoed to a sound which was a heart-wrung wail and she dropped forward on the moss again and lay there.

”He said, 'Oh, let us cry--together--together! Oh little--lovely love'!”

She who would have borne torment rather than betray the secret of the dream, now that it could no longer be a secret lay reft of all but memories and the wild longing to hold to her breast some shred which was her own. He let her wail, but when her wailing ceased helplessly he bent over her.

”Listen to me,” he said. ”If Donal were here he would tell you to listen. You are a child. You are too young to know what has come upon you--both.”

She did not speak.

”You were both too young--and you were driven by fate. If he had been more than a boy--and if he had not been in a frenzy--he would have remembered. He would have thought--”

Yes--yes! She knew how young! But oh, what mattered youth--or thought--or remembering! Her small hand beat in soft impatience on the ground.

He was--strangely--on one knee beside her, his head bent close, and in his voice there was a new strong insistence--as if he would not let her alone-- Oh! Donal! Donal!

”He would have remembered--that he might leave a child!”

His voice was almost hard. She did not know that in his mind was a memory which now in secret broke him--a memory of a belief which was a thing he had held as a gift--a certain faith in a clear young highness and strength of body and soul in this one scion of his house, which even in youth's madness would have _remembered_. If the lad had been his own son he might have felt something of the same pang.

His words brought back what she had heard Redcliff say to her earlier in the day--the thing which had only struck her again to the earth.

”It--will have--no father,” she shuddered. ”There is not even a grave.”

He put his hand on her shoulder--he even tried to force her to lift her head.

”It _must_ have a father,” he said, harshly. ”Look at me. It _must_.”

Stupefied and lost to all things as she was, she heard something in his harshness she could not understand and was startled by. Her small starved face stared at him piteously. There was no one but herself left in the world.

”There is no time--” he broke forth.

”He said so too,” she cried out. ”There was no time!”

”But he should have remembered,” the harsh voice revealed more than he knew. ”He could have given his child all that life holds that men call happiness. How could even a lad forget! He loved you--you loved him. If he had married you--”

He stopped in the midst of the words. The little starved face stared at him with a kind of awfulness of woe. She spoke as if she scarcely knew the words she uttered, and not, he saw, in the least as if she were defending herself--or as if she cared whether he believed her or not--or as if it mattered.

”Did you--think we were--not married?” the words dragged out.

Something turned over in his side. He had heard it said that hearts did such things. It turned--because she did not care. She knew what love and death were--what they _were_--not merely what they were called--and life and shame and loss meant nothing.

”Do you know what you are saying?” he heard the harshness of his voice break. ”For G.o.d's sake, child, let me hear the truth.”