Quite distinctly, though he evidently was not addressing her, she heard the man's hard voice say: "This cannot be borne."
And then in a different voice, there came these words over the miles from Meeghan's Grocery:
"Miss Heth;--I didn't see you when I should have--and now we are just too late. I can't reach Dal now."
"You--don't mean?..."
"He is dead."
"Dead!"
And it was this girl's shame, the fruit of her long fear, that her first feeling was one of base relief. So works Nature's first law. Dal was dead; all was settled; there was nothing to tell now. And then, as by the turning of a corner, she came front to front with a sudden horror, and there unrolled before her a moment of blackness....
"You must not blame yourself too hard," came the distant voice, dropping out of space like the sentences of destiny. "It's ... cruel, the way it's happened. But you'll always know you had the courage and the will to set him free, when you might--"
Carlisle's hand clenched the edge of the little table where she sat.
"Tell me," said her voice, pitifully faint. "Did he ... I--must know--Did he ...?"