John was alone amidst the dregs of the feast. Where the spilt drink was shining on the counter there was such a sight of glasses as he had never before seen. There were empty glasses and glasses still standing with half their drink in them, and glasses in which the porter had not been touched so drunk had everybody been.
Walter Clinton came in indignantly and said that it was a shame for him to be in such a state, and to go home out of that at once before the peelers got a hold of him.... And he went out with difficulty and down the old road of the elms towards his mother's house in the valley. He could hear the hurrying, heavy feet of those he had entertained so lavishly far down before him on the road.... For the moment he was happy. Before his burning eyes was the form of Rebecca Kerr. Her face had a look of quiet loveliness. He thought it was like the faces of the Madonnas in Father O'Keeffe's parlor.... "Rebecca! Rebecca!" he called to her ever in the agony of his love. "Thy hands, dear Rebecca!" ... She was not soiled now by any earthly sin, for he had purified her through the miracle of blood. And she was clean like the night wind.
He was a pitiable sight as he went staggering on, crying out this ruined girl's name to the night silence of the lonely places.... At last he fell somewhere in the soft, dewy grass. For a long while he remained here—until he began to realize that his vision was passing with the decline within him of the flame by which it had been created. The winds upon his face and hair were cold, and it seemed that he was lying in a damp place. His eyes sprang open.... He was lying by the lakeside and at the place where he had murdered Ulick Shannon.
He jumped up of a sudden, for his fear had come back to him. With his mouth wide open and a clammy sweat upon his brow, he started to run across what seemed a never-ending grassy space.... He broke madly through fences of thorn and barbed wire, which tore his clothes and his hands. He stumbled across fields of tillage.... At last, with every limb shivering, he came near his mother's door.... Presently he grew coldly conscious.... He could hear his father muttering drunkenly within. He came nearer, striving hard to steady himself and walk erect. He quickened his step to further maintain his pretense of sobriety. His foot tripped against something, and he lurched forward. He was caught in his mother's arms, for, at the sound of his approach, she had opened the door in resigned and mournful expectation.
"O Jesus!" she said.
There were two of them now.
THE END