Lysgaard leaned against the wall, gripping his bloody hand.
"She had to die!... She betrayed me!" His voice was like that of a spent runner. "You! She came to you! I meant to kill you, too!... Gott!"
For Hilda was standing in the doorway to the music-room, clutching the portières, hanging literally to them, in fact, struck by that hypnosis with which sudden tragedy always benumbs us. She saw the crumpled figure on the floor; her husband, tense of body, his weapon ready, his face hard and merciless; the blond man, sagged against the wall, staring with pathetic bewilderment not at the woman he had shot, but at her. With a supreme effort Hilda threw off the spell, ran to her sister and knelt. Berta, the little one whom she had always tried to shield, for whom she had accepted many a buffet, shouldered the charge of many a misdeed!
Hilda was standing in the doorway, struck by that
hypnosis with which sudden tragedy always benumbs us.
"Berta, Berta!"
One corner of Berta's lips moved upward—a touch of the old irony. "My passport ... has come!... The mad fool!... As much as I could love any one!... Hilda, the ghost ... returns to the ... tomb!" The beautiful head sank grotesquely against Hilda's shoulder. The Yellow Typhoon had slipped down the Far Horizon.
"Two!" whispered Lysgaard, thickly. "Two!... Gott!" He staggered across the room. "Two!... And she never told me!" he babbled in German. He dropped to his knees, thrusting Hilda aside; put his sound arm under the warm, limp body of the woman he had called his own. "Berta, Berta, little one, I did not know! Ah, God, why didn't you tell me? I thought you had betrayed me, left me for this Yankee swine!... Two!"
Mathison sprang to Hilda, raised her in his arms, and pressed her face against his shoulder. A miracle had happened. Berta's presence here had saved Hilda. That was the chief thought in Mathison's mind. Closely he pressed the loved one to him, so that she might not see the second tragedy, should Lysgaard turn upon him. But even as he made the movement he saw a strange action take place. Berta's body slid slowly from Lysgaard's arm. The man's shoulders pinched themselves together convulsively and his head went back with a spasmodic jerk. Then he fell across Berta's body. Mathison thought he had fainted, but later he learned that the bullet that had shattered the hand had ricocheted and plowed completely through the body. But for his tremendous vitality Lysgaard would never have reached Berta.