Tottering, he lurched to a chair and fell into it, even as the Governor's look took on a glare of outraged astonishment—for Craig's face now was drawn and contorted into a malignant grimace. But all at once this faded out, the features became expressionless, the eyes dull, and he slipped in a huddle from the chair to the floor.
He lay there upon his face without a word or movement. He did not hear the Governor's exclamation nor the voices about him, nor feel the touch of inquiring hands at heart and wrist. His passion had undone him. The dulling pulse beat on, but the brain had once more ceased its functioning; nor would it ever again quicken that inert body, at the behest of the great surgeon in Buda-Pesth or of any other.
Outside in the hall there were confusion and wondering voices, as the Governor, bending his great frame to the burden, with the aid of the Judge and other willing hands, bore the helpless, sagging form to the car that waited at the foot of the drive with its attendants. Before he followed the rest, Treadwell had turned and held out his hand to the man in the convict dress, and there was in the gesture, no less than the warm clasp, assurance man to man of steadfast silence and a friendship that was to be without end.
In the silent room—in a quiet that seemed curiously heavy after the storm of ebullient passion and pain that had swept it—Echo, sitting stirless but with every vein throbbing painfully, saw the striped figure pass behind the big leathern screen, to emerge a moment later, still wearing the mask but clad now in the conventional black-and-white of masculine evening-dress. In his hand he carried a striped bundle. He laid this on the red coals of the grate and the flames leaped up to wind it in a mass of brightness, shaming, for one triumphant minute, the dim light of the shaded lamp. As he stood with his back to her, looking down upon the smouldering tinder, some trick in the posture brought her a quick thrill of wretchedness. In the radiance she buried her face in her hands.
"Echo!"
She started and looked up with a sudden wildness, for the cry seemed weirdly to have materialised from the very substance of her longing. The figure had turned from the fireplace—was standing before her—with uncovered face!
CHAPTER L
REVELATION
"You!" she said. "You—you!"