She did not see the ugly little smile quiver about Anne's lips. She held her ground, patient, content. She had broken the last link which held her to a loathed life. It was as though she breathed a fresher, purer air.
"That frees me from all responsibility, doesn't it?" Barclay suggested.
"Quite."
He hesitated. His minutes in the place were numbered. His ears, attuned to catch the first warning, reminded him of the remorseless, oncoming danger, and yet he faltered. A bitter taste of failure was in his mouth.
"You had better follow me, Tristram. Resistance is useless."
"As you will. I have only one request to make. Respect my wife. She is very ill."
Barclay shrugged his shoulders.
"A dying woman——? I can grant you that much."
But even in the midst of his brutal self-assertiveness, a merciless flash of intuition showed him himself as they saw him. His power slipped through his fingers. He looked from Sigrid to Tristram, and knew their immeasurable indifference to all that he could threaten. They were not afraid—almost—they were glad. He could not penetrate their mood—he only felt it as an intolerable hurt—a frustration of that madly aching desire in him. They stood aloof from him as they had always done. He could not reach them—the woman had shaken herself free from his very name as from something loathsome. To the last—ineffectual, beyond the pale. He had meant to strike—he had set them free.
He made a gesture, and Vahana closed the door. He came and stood close to Sigrid, staring into her face.