But of a sudden she tore herself from my embrace and fled. I caught her on a stretch of lawn and held her close again. To my dismayed astonishment she was weeping wildly. I kissed the tears away and frantically implored her for their reason. And yet she would do nought but sob, and gaze around her like one distraught and terrified. "Oh, my God!" she cried at last; "I cannot, I cannot! I was mad to undertake this thing—mad—mad!"
"What thing, my sweetheart?" I demanded in amazement.
For answer she threw herself into my arms and kissed me with all the passion of her soul, once, twice. Then drawing back, she caught my hand in one of hers, and with the other pointed towards the river, trembling violently the while. "Ask me nothing now," she panted; "but let us go—quickly, quickly. This place is haunted! See, I am half sick with terror."
I passed my arm about her waist and would have led her to the boat, but at that moment a short shrill whistle sounded from the willows, and was answered by two others from the wood. The first, however, had hardly pierced the air, when Marion uttered a frightful scream, and sank swooning at my feet.
I understood then that the woman I loved had in some fashion betrayed me. For one desperate second I stood listening for sounds and thinking of escape. Then anguish overwhelmed me. The transition from my paradise of beliefs to the hell of certainties was too rapid, for hope to spring readily therefrom, and I thought to myself—
"Let even death come, for what is there good in life when love is wrecked and ruined!"
Uttering a groan, I fell on my knee beside her, not knowing what I did, not caring what might happen.
Next instant I dimly heard a rush of feet upon the grass, a cry of rage from right to left. A sharp pain quivered through my brain. I saw a blaze of light that faded quickly into unalleviated blackness. I felt the world swing with a sickening revolution round, and then came sweet encompassing oblivion.