She looked round with fearful eyes, crouching closer to the ground, her breath drawn in long labor, her hand tightening on his arm. Mackenzie felt a shudder sweep coldly over him, moved by the tragedy her attitude suggested.
“Hush!” she whispered, hand to her mouth. And again, leaning and peering: “Hush!” She raised her face to him, a great eagerness in her burning eyes. “Kill him, kill Swan Carlson, kind young man, and set me free again! You have no woman? I will be your woman. Kill him, and take me away!”
“You don’t have to kill Swan to get away from him,” he told her, the tragedy dying out of the moment, leaving only pity in its place. “You can go on tonight––you never need to go back.”
Hertha came nearer, scrambling to him with sudden movement on her knees, put her arm about his neck before he could read her intention or repel her, and whispered in his ear:
“I know where Swan hides the money––I can lead you to the place. Kill him, good man, and we will take it and go far away from this unhappy land. I will be your woman, faithful and true.”
“I couldn’t do that,” he said gently, as if to humor her; “I couldn’t leave my sheep.”
“Sheep, sheep!” said she, bitterly. “It is all in the world men think of in this land––sheep! A woman is nothing to them when there are sheep! Swan forgets, sheep make him forget. If he had no sheep, he would be a kind man to me again. Swan forgets, he forgets!”
She bent forward, looking at the lantern as if drawn 189 by the blaze, her great eyes bright as a deer’s when it stands fascinated by a torchlight a moment before bounding away.
“Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, her staring eyes on the light. She rocked herself from side to side, and “Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, like the burden of a lullaby.