“What are you doing out here in the dark?” she said. “You ought not to be lying there this cold night. You had better go home, or you will lose your way in the dark.”
He laughed wildly.
“Lose my way in the dark! It is always dark now—always, since that dark night—ha! ha!—that night!” His laugh was terrible in its wild despair. “Why do you look at me? Why do you speak to me? You should not! You should not! You would not if——oh, God! are you a ghost too?”
Such an awful look of horror shone out of his eyes that Monica’s blood ran cold. His gaze was fixed on vacancy. He looked straight at her, yet as if he did not see her, but something beyond. The anguish and despair painted upon that wild, yet still beautiful, face smote Monica’s heart with a sense of deep sorrow and pity.
“I am no ghost, Conrad,” she answered gently, trying if the sound of the old name would drive that wild madness out of his eyes. “Why are you afraid? What are you looking at? There is nothing there.”
For his eyes were still glaring wildly into the darkness beyond, and as Monica spoke he lifted his arm, and pointed to something out at sea.
“Don’t look at me!” he whispered hoarsely, yet not as if he addressed Monica. “Don’t speak to me! If you speak, I shall go mad! I shall go mad, I say! Why do you haunt me so? Why do you look always like that? I had a right—all is fair in love and war—and hate! Why did you give me the chance? I had a vow—a vow in heaven—or hell! Ah! ha! Revenge is sweet, after all!” and he burst into a wild, discordant laugh, dreadful to hear.
Monica shuddered, a sense of horror creeping over her. She did not catch the whole of his words, lost as that hoarse whisper was sometimes in the sullen plash of the advancing waves. The words were not addressed to her, but to some imaginary object visible only to the eye of madness. She attached no meaning to what she heard. She had no clue by which to unravel the workings of his disordered mind. Yet it was terrible to see his terror-stricken face, and listen to the exclamations addressed to a phantom foe. She tried to recall him to himself.