She sighed, and the sound went to my heart. She gathered up her reins. “We had better go, sir,” she said, in a lifeless tone, “before they discover our presence. They may hear our voices.”
She had not had the strength to carry it through! Why? My heart beat more quickly as I pondered the question. I no longer felt the fog on my cheek, the ague in my bones. The note of the bull-frog lost its melancholy, the sigh of the wind across the marshes its sadness. Warmth awoke in me, and with it hope, and a purpose—a purpose, wild it might be, high-strained it might be, and extravagant, but deliberate. For as certainly as I loved her, as certainly as my heartstrings were torn for the tenderness of her body broken by so many fatigues, for the agony of her spirit which had borne her so far, as certainly as she was heaven and earth to me—and she loved me, I believed it now!—so surely did I know that there was but one bridge which could cross the gulf that divided me from her! There was one way, and one way only, which could bring me to her.
And that way lay through the door of the mill. Yet first—first, strong as my purpose was, I had to fight the temptation to pay myself a part of that which fate might withhold from me. To clasp her knees as I stood beside her, to draw her down to me, to hold her on my breast, to cover her face, white and woe-begone in the moonlight, with kisses, to tell her that I loved her—this had been heaven to me! But I had to forego it. I might not pay myself beforehand. Afterwards—but I dared not think of afterwards. I dared not think of what lay between the present and the future. I must act, not think.
“We had better go,” she repeated dully.
“And you thought it might save him?” I said.
“I thought that I could do it!” she answered. She shivered.
“You shall do it,” I replied. “Come!”
I led my horse towards the door, and had travelled half the space that lay between us and the threshold before she grasped my meaning; before she moved. Then, “Stop!” she cried. She pressed her horse abreast of me. “Don’t you understand?” she cried. “Don’t you see—”
“Yes,” I said, “I see.” And for a moment, as we passed from the moonlight into the shadow, and the horses’ shoes clattered on the stones before the door, I let my hand rest on her knee. “I see. But I also remember. I remember that your father saved my life. I remember that I delivered him up to death. I remember—many things. And if any risk of mine may avail to save him, God knows that I take the hazard cheerfully!”
She cried, “No!” with a sort of passion, and she tried to draw me back. But it was too late. I was at the door. I kicked it.