If he could only let her know that he was alive.... If he had had his flint and steel he would have tried to set something on fire—even if it were his nest—on the chance of her seeing the smoke and understanding it. He searched eagerly for another tinder-box, but could not light on one.
It was an anxious and gloomy man that crept into the heart of the curtain-case that night; but he slept, in a way and brokenly, in spite of it all, for Nature knows man's limits, and when he goes beyond them she steps in at times and takes command.
LVI
To Avice, also, that first night was one long horror.
She made up the fire and sat waiting for him to come. He would know in what a state of despair she would be and he would certainly come. She was sure he would come—if he could. If he did not it was because he could not. And ... if he could not....
The wind shrilled eerily outside. It sounded cold and heartless ... pitiless ... like messages from the dead ... warnings of evil. It got on her nerves and set her shivering. She crept to her room at last and dropped hopelessly on to her bed, and lay there sorely stricken.
In the gray of the morning she ate mechanically, and hurried away to the point for sign or sight of him. But it was all she could do to make out the pile itself, like a bristling rampart in the dull dim distance. As to distinguishing anything on it, that was out of the question.
She wandered about there all day long, with her eyes strained on the pile like one bereft, and only crept back when night shut it out and drove her home.
She was satisfied in her own mind now that he was dead. If he had been alive he would certainly have come. Well, she would not be long in following him.... Without him she had no desire to live ... even if she could struggle on alone, which was very doubtful ... better to join him quickly than to drag on miserably all by herself on that lonely bank, and go crazy in the end.
She sobbed herself asleep, her last wish that she might never waken. She had eaten nothing since the morning, and then only a hasty scrap that had no taste in it. The fire had gone out.... It did not matter. She would go out herself as soon as might be.... A woful end to all their golden hopes and happiness.