The dwarf heard the moaning of the stricken girl, her cry, "Valmond! Valmond!" the sobs that followed, the woe of her self-abnegation, even in delirium.
For one's self it mattered little, maybe, the attitude of the mind, whether it would arrest or be glad of the terrific travel; but for another human being, who might judge? Who might guess what was best for the other; what was most merciful, most good? Destiny meant us to prove our case against it, as well as we might; to establish our right to be here as long as we could, so discovering the world day by day, and ourselves to the world, and ourselves to ourselves. To live it out, resisting the power that destroys so long as might be—that was the divine secret.
"Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!"
The voice moaned out the words again and again. Through the sounds there came another inner voice, that resolved all the crude, primitive thoughts here defined; vague, elusive, in Parpon's own brain.
The girl's life should be saved at any cost, even if to save it meant the awful and certain doom his mother had whispered to him over the bed an hour before.
He turned and went into the house. The old woman bent above Elise, watching intently, her eyes straining, her lips anxiously compressed.
"My son," she said, "she will die in an hour if I don't give her more. If I do, she may die at once. If she gets well, she will be—" She made a motion to her eyes.
"Blind, mother, blind!" he whispered, and he looked round the room. How good was the sight of the eyes! "Perhaps she'd rather die," said the old woman. "She is unhappy." She was thinking of her own far, bitter past, remembered now after so many years. "Misery and blindness too—ah! What right have I to make her blind? It's a great risk, Parpon, my dear son."
"I must, I must, for your sake. Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!" cried
Elise again out of her delirium.
The stricken girl had answered for Parpon. She had decided for herself.
Life! that was all she prayed for: for another's sake, not her own.