"She had defeated me.… I watched her without uttering a word. Farrell let out a guttural sort of ah-h! and sat up somewhat higher against her knee, opening his chest and breathing in new life as the Chartreuse coursed through his veins. Santa turned the flask upside-down, and handed it to me.
"'I have won!' she said softly. 'Men at the last are—what is the word?—magnanimous, mostly: and that is why a woman can usually win in the end.'
"'You have thrown away,' said I, 'so much of life as I gave you, renouncing much. You have sacrificed yourself.'
"'That was my share of the price, my friend. Now continue to be great, as for these many days you have been good. There is a bad pain about my heart. With that other small bottle of yours, and with that needle I have seen you use… You will? Ah, how much better it is to be friends than enemies, when the world—even this little shrinking world—is so wide yet—so wide—'
"So I took her wrist and, she scarcely wincing, injected the last drop of my morphia: yes, Roddy, and kissed the spot like any poor fool, she not resisting!… Her last words were that I should lay the guitar back again on her lap.… Oh, damn it, man! it was everything your damned sneerer would choose to call it.… But I tell you I held my ear close to her breast for hours; and in my light-headedness I heard the muted music lulling her: and in and out of her breathing, when she was long past speech—and above the stertorous snoring of my enemy laid at her feet—I heard distant waves breaking in a low chime to some words of a verse I had once quoted to her on a night when her song had made the crews sorrowful for a while before lifting their hearts again to make them merry—music to ripple, ripple:"
'—Ripple in my hearing
Like waves upon a lonely beach, where no craft anchoreth;
That I may steep my soul therein, and craving naught, nor fearing,
Drift on through slumber to a dream, and through a dream to death.'
'—Ripple in my hearing
Like waves upon a lonely beach, where no craft anchoreth;
That I may steep my soul therein, and craving naught, nor fearing,
Drift on through slumber to a dream, and through a dream to death.'
"My ear was close to her breast, listening, as the last breath went out with a flutter… and Santa was dead, having conquered me— conquered me far beyond my guessing; but up to the moment having subdued me so effectively that my sole kiss of her had been taken, kneeling, upon the wrist, as one kisses faith to a sovereign, and had never been returned. Through the night I held her wrist until it was cold."
"Towards dawn, and just at that moment when a watcher's spirits are at their lowest, Farrell stirred, stretched out his legs, drew them up again, and asked how things were?… For his part (he added, sitting up weakly), he felt a different man.
"'It behoves you to be,' said I with some sternness. 'Take the tiller and—yes, you may hold on to it with some firmness. Your wife is dead.'