Once her ankle turned under her with a sickening pain; but she forced herself to rise and limp onward. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” she whispered to herself over and over again, unconscious that she was whispering. Her body was not inured to such endeavors, but her will was master of her body. When exhaustion would have brought her to the ground her will held her upright, gave her strength to flounder onward, always to the accompaniment of that hysterical whisper: “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
Her skirts, soggy with the slime of marsh pools, clung to her legs; her hair hung about her face, caught on projecting branches, to be torn loose ruthlessly. She seemed not to feel the pain of it. The flesh of her hands was lacerated; blood oozed from more than one abrasion upon her cheeks. She was unconscious of it. All of consciousness that remained was the knowledge that Jim Ashe was there ahead of her somewhere, going to his death, perhaps; that she could, must warn him, save him So she floundered on, with the whispered words “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” urging her ahead. Perhaps she heard the words; perhaps they helped to spur her on. There came a moment when she did hear them, but fancied they were spoken by another. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
It seemed as if she had been traveling so always, forcing her way through nightmare obstructions, encountering such vain labors as are only to be met with in vivid, horrible dreams. Then she tripped, fell, striking her shoulder against something hard, cold. She felt it with her hand, and cried aloud. It was the railroad! She had won to the railroad!
Was Jim ahead or behind? There was no time to study. Her mind was in no condition to reason; there was only the feverish urge that forced her on. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” She turned up the track, now trying pitifully to run, now wavering, staggering, but always persevering.
How black it was! She strained her eyes forward. He might be near, very near, yet she could not see him, and any moment her strength might fail.
She demanded yet another effort from the forces so near exhaustion. “Jim!” she cried, shrilly, wildly. “Jim! Jim! Wait, oh, wait!”
A hundred yards up the track Jim heard the cry, stopped, listened.
“Jim, wait!” It sounded more faintly. A woman’s voice, here, calling his name! There was but one woman in Diversity who had ever called him Jim.
In this moment, a moment he knew was weighted with danger to him, came her voice out of the black mystery that lay behind him. It was startling, unbelievable. He asked himself if much worry, much travail of heart, had not deranged some spring or cog in his imagination, so that he heard things which were not. If it really were Marie, what was she doing there? She had betrayed him once; was this another act in tune with her betrayal? He braced himself against a fresh danger, an unforeseen danger, and waited.
She tottered up to him out of the black blanket of night; tottered, hands fumbling before her, his name on her lips, his name and that other word which her will had set there so that it was repeated endlessly without volition: “Jim, hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”