But tension never fails to find the weakest spot.
Suddenly she flung both hands to her burning forehead, staggered on another couple of paces, then fell crushed to the floor, with a low, heart-breaking cry.
The kindly darkness of insensibility blotted away for a time her madness and her pain.
CHAPTER IX
DARKNESS
Thus the weak hand, which was to have dealt the death blow, gave life to the traitor and liberty to the betrayer. For a secret tendril of love still clung and quivered about the dead heart. This might not be killed entirely, nor stamped out by a mere effort of the will, though for long it lay quiescent, in the mood of eternal silence. The presence, the sight of the once loved, aroused that latent force into hot overwhelming life, banished all recollection of duty, cast into oblivion memory of the sacred oath, the curse of her shattered life.
She became woman again—that was the difference.
Once he had deserted her, and the heart flickered out in a wild grief. The one thought then was for vengeance. She lived for it; cried for it to the Spirit; her soul was fed with the longing, while the waiting for it maintained the body in strength. Then it came, the life lay in her hand, she was bidden to crush it and satisfy all longing.
But instead she courted a felon's death in a wild effort to assist him in escaping. To save him she gladly offered to sacrifice life and honour, though both of these things were valueless, and dead fruit in her mouth.