“No need for that, either, Thalassa. There are other things to think about.”
Thalassa’s hand dropped to his side. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Get on with your doctoring.”
“No—not now,” answered Ravenshaw sadly. “It’s no use. She is dead.”
“Dead!” Thalassa stood overwhelmed. Silently he surveyed the slight recumbent form on the couch, his moving lips seemed to be counting the drops which dripped from her clinging garments on to the carpet. “Dead, did ye say? Why, I carried her here—brought her across the moors to you.” His voice trembled. “Can’t ye do nothing?”
“No—not now. It is too late.”
Thalassa’s eyes rested attentively on the other’s face. Ravenshaw’s complete acquiescence in death as an unalterable fact stung his untutored feelings by its calmness. “Dead!” he repeated fiercely. “Then you’ve got that to pay for now—Remington.”
“Pay? Oh, yes, I’ll pay—make payment in full,” was the reply, delivered with a bitter look. “But not to you.”
“To think I shouldn’t a’ known ye!” Thalassa spoke like a man in a dream.
“After all these years? After what I suffered alone on that island—through you and Turold? You’d hardly have known me if you’d met me six months afterwards instead of thirty years. Robert Turold didn’t know me. Nobody knew me.”
Thalassa’s eyes still dwelt upon him with the unwilling look of a man compelled to gaze upon an evocation of the dead.