'Hush!' he whispered in a choking, almost irrecognisable voice.
Crouching at her feet, he laid his head in her lap and remained like that for a long time without speaking, while she laid her tender hands upon his temples and felt the wild, irregular beating of his arteries. She realised that he was suffering fiercely, and in his pain forgot all thought of her own, grieving now only for his grief—only for him.
Presently he rose, and clasped her with such mad vehemence to him that she was frightened.
'What has come to you! What is it?' she cried, trying to look in his eyes, to discover the reason of his sudden frenzy. But he only buried his face deeper in her bosom, her neck, her hair—anywhere out of sight.
All at once, she struggled free of his embrace, her whole form convulsed with horror, her face ghastly and distraught as if she had at that moment torn herself from the arms of Death.
That name! That name!—She had heard that name!
A deep and awful silence fell upon her soul, and in it there suddenly opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea might writhe and supplicate and despair as he would—in vain.
She heard nothing. Some instinct directed her actions. She found her things and put them on.
Andrea lay upon the floor, sobbing, frenzied, mad.
He was conscious that she was preparing to leave the room.