Twice she fell, once right into the stream, but she took no heed, she did not even seem to feel it. At last she was at the bottom, now creeping like a black dot across the wide spaces of moonlight, and now swallowed up in the shadow. There before her gaped the mouth of the little cave; her strength was leaving her at last, and she was fain to crawl into it, broken-hearted, crazed, and—dying.
“Oh, God forgive me! God forgive me!” she moaned as she sank upon the rocky floor. “Bessie, I sinned against you, but I have washed away my sin. I did it for you, Bessie love, not for myself. I had rather have died than kill him for myself. You will marry John now, and you will never, never know what I did for you. I am going to die. I know that. I am dying. Oh, if only I could see his face once more before I die—before I die!”
Slowly the westering moonlight crept down the blackness of the rock. Now at last it peeped into the little cave and played upon John’s sleeping face lying within six feet of her. Her prayer had been granted; there was her lover by her side.
With a start and a great sigh of doubt she recognised him. Was it a vision? Was he dead? She dragged herself to him upon her hands and knees and listened for his breathing, if perchance he still breathed and was not a wraith. Then it came, strong and slow, the breath of a man in deep sleep.
So he lived. Should she try to wake him? What for? To tell him she was a murderess and then to let him see her die? For instinct told her that nature was exhausted; and she knew that she was certainly going—going fast. No, a hundred times no!
Only she put her hand into her breast, and drawing out the pass on the back of which she had written her last message to him, she thrust it between his listless fingers. It should speak for her. Then she leant over him, and watched his sleeping face, a very incarnation of infinite, despairing tenderness, and love that is deeper than the grave. And as she watched, gradually her feet and legs grew cold and numb, till at length she could feel nothing below her bosom. She was dead nearly to the heart. Well, it was better so!
The rays of the moon faded slowly from the level of the little cave, and John’s face grew dark to her darkening sight. She bent down and kissed him once—twice—thrice.
At last the end came. There was a great flashing of light before her eyes, and within her ears the roaring as of a thousand seas, and her head sank gently on her lover’s breast as on a pillow; and there Jess died and passed upward towards the wider life and larger liberty, or, at the least, downward into the depths of rest.
Poor dark-eyed, deep-hearted Jess! This was the fruition of her love, and this her bridal bed.
It was done. She had gone, taking with her the secret of her self-sacrifice and crime, and the night-winds moaning amidst the rocks sang their requiem over her. Here she first had learned her love, and here she closed its book on earth.