He squeezed her hand lovingly.
"Mamma has seen it, too," he whispered. "You know she was with Carol when he fell in, and she saw him go into the door of the palace and be met by all the golden angels. She tried to get him back, but she cannot swim, and then she came running home for help. Afterward, they took Carol's body out and buried him, but, you know, he is really there still. Mamma has seen him looking through the windows—she told me—but you must not tell any one. It is very secret, and once I thought I saw him, too, beckoning to me."
Christine was staggered. That so dangerous an illusion had been fostered by a mother was too bewildering, and she hardly knew how to meet and loyally fight it. It did not take her long to decide. With all the strength at her command, she set to work to clear away from his mind the whole fantastical construction. He clung to it firmly at first, and, in the end, almost pleaded to be left with the belief that he had but to step down the dam wall and join his brother in the fair pink palace. She realized now what tragedy had been lurking at her elbow all these days. Remembering the day when she had caught him up at the brink of the dam, she turned cold as ice in the heat-heavy room. A moment later, she returned to her theme, her explanations, her prayers for a promise from him that never, never would he go looking again for a vision that did not exist. At last he promised, and almost immediately fell asleep.
As for Christine Chaine, she stayed where she was on the floor, her head resting on the bed in sheer exhaustion, her limbs limp. All thought of going into the garden had left her. Sitting there, stiff-kneed and weary, she thought of Saltire's eyes, and realized that there had come and gone an evening which she must count for ever among the lost treasures of her life. Yet she did not regret it as she rose at last and looked down by the dim light on the pale, beautiful, but composed little face on the pillow.
She lay long awake. Roddy's bed was too short for her, and there was no ease in it, even had her mind and heart been at rest. All the fantasies she had beguiled from the boy's brain had come to roost in her own, with a hundred other vivid and painful impressions. The night, too, was fuller than usual of disquietude. The wind, which had been rising steadily, now tore at the shutters and rushed shrieking through the trees. There was a savage rumble of thunder among the hills, and, intermittently, lightning came through the shutter-slats.
When, above it all, she heard a gentle tapping, and sensed the whispering presence without, her cup of dreadful unease was full. But she was not afraid. She rose, as she had done one night before, and put on her dressing-gown. For a while, standing close to the shutters, she strained her ears to catch the message whose import she knew so well. The idea of speaking to someone or something as anxious as herself over Roddy had banished all horror. She longed for an interview with the strange being without. There was nothing to do but attempt, as before, to leave the house by the front door.
Down the long passage and through the dining-room she felt her way, moving noiselessly. When she came to the door, she found it once again with the bar hanging loose. More, it was ajar, and stirring (sluggishly, by reason of its great weight) to the wind. But her hand fell back when she would have opened it wide, for there were two people in the blackness of the porch, bidding each other good-night with kisses and wild words. Clear on a gust of wind came Isabel van Cannan's voice, fiercely passionate.
"I hate the place. Oh, to be gone from it, Dick! To be gone with you, my darling! When—when?"
He crushed the question on her lips with kisses and whisperings.
Christine Chaine stole back from whence she came, with the strange and terrible sensation that her heart was being crushed between iron fingers and was bleeding slowly, drop by drop, to death. Once more, life had played her false. Love had mocked her and passed by on the other side.