"You think something has happened?" Lassie faltered.
"Yes, something warns me. It has come over me heavily to-night. I must go and face it. What is the reason of my love, if it seems to fail him when the strain comes. It shall not fail. They shall not trick me into failing. Perhaps they are trying to spare me or shield me, but I'll go to receive the blow. An instant swept him out of his life-work—I saw his spirit of resignation—I will be resigned, too—"
Lassie felt the bed shaken by the fierceness of sobs. She was dumb, not knowing what to say. The orbit of Alva's love was so infinitely greater than that of her own, that the feebler suffered eclipse in that hour. She saw herself and Ingram completely swept aside, and was not even conscious of the fact.
"It is my heart that suffers," Alva pressed on after a minute, "only my heart, Lassie; my soul is strong, very strong. There is nothing else for my spirit to learn, but half of my being still suffers; it cannot remember every second how it was when I knelt beside him and he told me in whispers that he was content and that if I loved him I also would be content. I have tried to be content, I have been content until to-day—until to-night. But now, as I lay here in the dark, it seemed as if content had fled not only me but the whole universe. I feel as if content had ceased to exist. Rebellion is in the air. In some strange way I'm sure that he has abjured resignation and renunciation; I feel that he is in the throes of something—he is suffering, suffering agony; and I want to be with him. I must be with him! I shall leave to-morrow!"
Lassie trembled; she had never seen any one like this before.
"When do you want me to go, Alva," she whispered, presently.
"Could you go to-morrow at four, and I will take the train the opposite way at eight?"
"I'll be ready; don't mind about me a bit, dear."
"We must go. Oh, listen to that wind coming down the gorge; doesn't it sound as if some spirit were in travail? So sad, so melancholy! Something tremendous is taking place, and I am far from him while he endures."
The wind was surely rising, and its moan shook the window sash.