"My hold!" she said, with a sudden fierceness. "Do you think that there is no limit to the help which I must give him?" Then her voice dropped. "No; I have let go. It is no use. I have done all I can, and now I can only wait till the play is over and the curtain drops. Perhaps it may not be so very long, after all. It spoils any tragedy, if the last acts drag."
He had been fired by her passion; but he had resisted it. Now her despair unmanned him. It was only the old, old situation: the guiltless one must suffer for the guilty. The fact in general terms he accepted as a necessary evil; the particular instance was unbearable. Once more, and for the last time, the balance wavered; then slowly, steadily it dipped into position. The tragedy would be no less a tragedy, because a new hero took the stage for the final acts. He tried to find words to say; but they refused to come at his bidding. He could only stand mute and look down at her, as she sat in her old place by the table, with her head buried in her arms.
The seconds passed and lengthened into minutes. Little by little, the cold, gray light of the snowy morning was creeping into the room, dimming the lamplight to pale yellow streaks and filling the place with a chill, forbidding gloom. The stillness was so absolute that Thayer could hear his watch ticking in his pocket, could hear the beating of his own heart. Neither one of them moved, or spoke. In the next room, there was a faint sound; but they never heeded it. Beatrix's face was hidden in her arms; Thayer's eyes, turned now to the window, were fixed upon the pitiless storm outside, while mechanically he sought to adjust the regular ticking of his watch to the broken rhythm of the Famine Theme which once more was haunting his brain.
Neither one of them faced the open door; neither one of them saw the crawling, slinking figure, the pale, fear-stricken face, and the staring eyes which appeared in the doorway, clung there for a moment and then vanished again as noiselessly as they had come. Neither of them, had they seen, could have imagined the fearful interpretation which the delirium-stricken brain had put upon the silent scene.
The stir in the next room came again. Then it increased until the cottage echoed with the tumult of struggle and of inarticulate crying. Above it all, Lorimer's maddened voice rang out in piteous terror,—
"Let me go! I saw him! It's Thayer, and he will kill Beatrix! She is afraid of him, and she is begging for mercy! He is killing my wife, my Beatrix! Let me go! Beatrix! Beatrix! Dear girl, I'm coming!"
Beatrix sprang to her feet, as Thayer rushed to the inner room where the words had ended in a fury of inarticulate shrieks. There was the sound of a heavy struggle, when it seemed to her that the cottage rocked with the rocking, writhing bodies of the men just beyond her sight. She dared not face the scene in all its horror. She stood, erect and alone, in the middle of the floor, while the struggle slowly died away and the shrieks sank to the piteous low whimpering of an animal in pain. Then all was still.
Weak by inheritance, weaker still by dissipation, Lorimer's heart had yielded to the shock of his imaginary fear; but the last coherent thought of his distracted brain had been that of protecting love for Beatrix.
In the gray, cold light, through the silent cottage, the old butler came to Beatrix's side and gently touched her arm.
"It is over, Miss Beatrix," he said gravely; "and may the good God be pitiful to us all!"