A mist came across her vision; faintly she saw the stiffened disfigured corpse which yet she felt had once been something she had loved with passion, laid reverently upon a stretcher, its irons loosened and cast away, and then covered with a great cloak. Then the sea, the beach, the white moon faded and waved and receded. Molly's soul went back to her body again, while blessed tears fell one by one from her hot eyes. She breathed; her limbs relaxed; round the tired brain came, with a soft hush like that of gentle wings, dark oblivion.
Bending over her, for he was aware that for good or evil the crisis was at hand, the physician saw moisture bead upon the suddenly smoothed brow, heard a deep sigh escape the parted lips. And then with a movement like a weary child's she drew her arms close and fell asleep.
Having laid his friend to his secret rest, deep in the rock of Scarthey, where the free waves that his soul had revelled in would beat till the world's end, Sir Adrian returned to Pulwick in the early morning, spent with the long and heavy night's toil—for it had taxed the strength of even three men to hollow out a grave in such a soil. On the threshold he was greeted by the physician.
"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messengers of glad tidings!" From afar, by the man's demeanour, he knew that the tidings were glad. And most blessed they were indeed to his ears, but to them alone not strange. Throughout every detail of his errand his mind had dwelt rather with the living than the dead. What he had done, he had done for her; and now, the task achieved, it seemed but natural that the object for which it had been undertaken should have been achieved likewise.
But, left once more with her, seeing her once more wrapt in placid sleep, whom he had thought he would never behold at rest again save in the last sleep of all, the revulsion was overpowering. He sat down by her side, and through his tears gazed long at the lovely head, now in its pallor and emaciation so sadly like that of his dead love in the sorrowful days of youth; and he thanked heaven that he was still of the earth to shield her with his devotion, to cherish her who was now so helpless and bereft.
And with such tears and such thoughts came a forgetfulness of that anguish which in him, as well as in her, had for so long been part of actual existence.
When Tanty entered on tiptoe some hours later, she saw her niece motionless upon her pillow, sleeping as easily and reposefully as a child. And close to her head, Sir Adrian, reclining in the arm-chair, asleep likewise. His arm was stretched limply over the bed and, on its sleeve still stained with the red mud of the grave in Scarthey, rested Lady Landale's little, thin, ivory-white fingers.
Thus ended Molly's brief but terrible madness.