BOOK IV
LOVE IN A MIST
XLIV
The effect of the mate's death on The Girl's spirits was visible at once. The cloud had lifted from her face before they got fairly home. Her eyes shone untroubled, though a look of horror and disgust came into them whenever they rested on the swirling gray cloud behind them. In her very movements Wulf noticed a new and gracious freedom.
And his judgment did her no injustice in the matter, nor imputed it, in any slightest degree, to mere exultation over a fallen enemy. For he knew to the full in what terror of the dead man she had lived, and how the fear of him, both for herself and himself, had lain like a weight on her soul and darkened all her outlook.
He felt as she did about it. He could not regret the fact of the man's death, but the manner of it gave him poignant distress.
In spite of their hard work they had neither of them much appetite for food that night. They turned in early and slept as they had not slept for long, without fear and without strain. The darkness was no longer pregnant with ungaugeable terrors. The dawn was like the beginning of a new life to them.
Wulf, indeed, saw again that night, and many a night thereafter, the horror of the clustering birds and that over which they bristled and fought. But he woke each time to the immeasurable relief of the man's death. That had been essential to their own safety, but he thanked God with his whole heart that it had not been by his hand that he had had to die. For that he never could be sufficiently grateful. He had played him fair and more than fair. He was dead, and their consciences and their hearts were alike at rest.
They woke next morning to the close folding of the mist, and he had to set to work at once making good the broken companion-doors to keep it out of the cabin as much as possible.