"Closed, closed! When the night came, they closed! They couldn't! They couldn't! I'll not--I can't!"
She had the hand's clasp of mountain blossoms stripped down to a few small flowers of varied blooms. They heard the coming of the groom, half running. A silence fell over all the great encampment. The girl's father made a half step forward, even as her mother sank down, cowering, her hands at her face.
Then, without a word, with no plan or purpose, Molly Wingate turned, sprang away from them and fled out into a night that was black indeed.
Truly she had but one thought, and that in negation only. Yonder came to claim her a man suddenly odious to her senses. It could not be. His kiss, his arms--if these were of this present time and place, then no place in all the world, even the world of savage blackness that lay about, could be so bad as this. At the test her philosophy had forsaken her, reason now almost as well, and sheer terrified flight remained her one reaction.
She was gone, a white ghost in her wedding gown, her little slippers stumbling over the stones, her breath coming sobbingly as she ran. They followed her. Back of them, at the great fire whose illumination deepened the shadows here, rose a murmur, a rising of curious people, a pressing forward to the Wingate station. But of these none knew the truth, and it was curiosity that now sought answer for the delay in the anticipated divertisement.
[pg 230]
Molly Wingate ran for some moments, to some distance--she knew of neither. Then suddenly all her ghastly nightmare of terror found climax in a world of demons. Voices of the damned rose around her. There came a sudden shock, a blow. Before she could understand, before she could determine the shadowy form that rose before her in the dark, she fell forward like the stricken creature.