“And must be the one to bring it thee all smiling and smirking? I could kill myself for't. Death spares none,” she sobbed. “Death spares none.”
Gerard staggered against the window sill. “But He is master of death,” he groaned. “Or they have taught me a lie. I begin to fear there is no God, and the saints are but dead bones, and hell is master of the world. My pretty Margaret; my sweet, my loving Margaret. The best daughter! the truest lover! the pride of Holland! the darling of the world! It is a lie. Where is this caitiff Hans? I'll hunt him round the town. I'll cram his murdering falsehood down his throat.”
And he seized his hat and ran furiously about the streets for hours.
Towards sunset he came back white as a ghost. He had not found Memling; but his poor mind had had time to realise the woman's simple words, that Death spares none.
He crept into the house bent, and feeble as an old man, and refused all food. Nor would he speak, but sat, white, with great staring eyes, muttering at intervals, “There is no God.” Alarmed both on his account and on her own (for he looked a desperate maniac), his landlady ran for her aunt.
The good dame came, and the two women, braver together, sat one on each side of him, and tried to soothe him with kind and consoling voices. But he heeded them no more than the chairs they sat on. Then the younger held a crucifix out before him, to aid her. “Maria, mother of heaven, comfort him,” they sighed. But he sat glaring, deaf to all external sounds.
Presently, without any warning, he jumped up, struck the crucifix rudely out of his way with a curse, and made a headlong dash at the door. The poor women shrieked. But ere he reached the door, something seemed to them to draw him up straight by his hair, and twirl him round like a top. He whirled twice round with arms extended; then fell like a dead log upon the floor, with blood trickling from his nostrils and ears.