She began to cry helplessly. Then the pain dried even her tears. She clung to him in a frenzy of agony.
"Oh, Tris—Tris—help me——"
She passed at last into a merciful unconsciousness. Not once during that night did she regain knowledge of his presence and yet he knew that even in that mental darkness she suffered as only women are doomed to suffer. Watching her, alleviating where he could, he gave no thought to the past or future, no thought to the other woman who had lain in the selfsame place, battling with the selfsame enemy. He did not ask himself whether, had this piteous offer of forgiveness been made in the crisis of their lives, it would have stemmed the torrent of events, whether indeed there is any power which can check the course of character and the heart's will. Nothing of all that mattered. Nothing but this pitiful suffering. He saw Anne only in her girlish youth and innocence and ignorance. He saw her as a child ground between life and her own child's beliefs and ideals. She claimed him by the great right of pain.
Her poor fevered little hand rested in his. Even in her unconsciousness she clung to him as though his touch soothed her. But in her delirium she called on Owen—called on him incessantly——
And in the early hours of the morning her hope was taken from her.
* * * * *
Owen Meredith reached the river shortly before nightfall. The muffled roar of the water sounded louder and nearer than before. As he crossed the bridge he could feel the steel girders quivering under the strain; he could see the yellowish-greyish mass racing from under his feet into the gloom of the coming night. It conveyed nothing to him. He was thinking of Anne—praying for her with a dull, stupid persistence.
The engineer, encased in waterproof, met him with a torrent of grim abuse.
"What we poor devils have to put up with! If this blessed thing doesn't hold—I'm dished. Bah—India! What the dickens are we doing in this galère? The very elements are against us." He shook himself like a wet dog. "Well, you'd better hurry. You'll catch up that fat monkey of a Rajah. He's in a towering rage about something—somebody been rude to his Allmightiness. You'd better soothe him down. There's trouble enough going——"
Meredith rode on. He did not want to catch up with Rasaldû. He was still thinking of Anne when the Rajah, wet through and mounted on a limping English thoroughbred, loomed up like a ghost in the rain-soaked twilight. He greeted Meredith much as the engineer had done.