Now that she was gone and he about to go, he could recognize her as a serene and splendid star shining briefly above the lurid shoddiness of his own grasping life—and the star had set.
At first a profoundly stunned and torpid feeling held him numb; a blunt agony of loss and guilt, but slowly out of that wretched paralysis emerged another thought. He was helpless to bring her back and that futility would drive him mad unless out of it could come some motive of action.
She was not only dead, but dead by the hands of murderers who had come after him—and all that remained was the effort to avenge her. Like waters moving slowly at first but swelling into freshet power, wrath and insatiable thirst for vengeance swept him to a sort of madness.
Here he was kneeling over the unstirring woman he had loved while out there were the murder hirelings who had brought about the tragedy. Her closed and unaccusing eyes, exhorting him as passionate utterances could not have done, incited him to a frenzy. At least some of these culprits must go unshriven, and by his own hand to the death that inevitably awaited himself.
And as Spurrier’s flux of molten emotions seethed about that determination a solidifying transition came over him and his brain cleared of the blind spots of fury into the coherency of a plan.
Out there they would wait for a while to test the completeness of their success. If he gave way to his passion and challenged them as inclination clamored to do, they would dispatch him at leisure.
Just now he was willing enough to die, but entirely 179 unwilling to die alone. He craved company and a red journey for that final crossing. So once more he looked down into the face on which there was no stir of animation, then very gently bent and kissed the quiet lips.
“If you could come back to me,” he chokingly whispered, “I’d unsay everything, except that I love you. But if there’s a meeting place beyond, I’ll join you soon—when I’ve made them pay for you.”
He lifted her tenderly and, through his agitation, came a sudden realization of how light she was as he laid her gently on his army cot. After that he picked up his rifle and bulged out his pockets with cartridges.