But the words brought her no relief. She knew that if this man died his life would be required at her hands. And if he returned alive, yet broken in health, mutilated, crushed, she would have to confront him ever after, reading in every furrow of his forehead the charge against herself.
“I have done right,” she gasped. “I could not do otherwise. I have done right.”
And her thoughts went back to Otto, dying here, gasping out with every successive stifle his last, his only appeal. For a long time she knelt there, her face upon her hands.
“If only some one would answer!” she thought. “If only one of them would speak!”
The place was very silent. She could hear the dog Monk sniffing and vaguely whining beyond the outer door.
“If only Otto would answer me! If only he would release me! What am I that I must bear this weight single-handed? If only I knew—if only I knew!”
A great agony fell upon her, such as was strange to her strong and steadfast nature. She wrung her hands, and, prostrate against the oaken, empty bedstead, in impotent protest, she moaned softly through the darkness.
Suddenly some one—something—struck her through the darkness, heavily; she fell back, losing consciousness, across the floor.
When she opened her eyes they rested on Hephzibah. The waiting-woman knelt, with a crazed expression on her white face, peering close down upon Ursula, by the faint glimmer of a night-lamp on the floor. Ursula shuddered, and dropped her eyes again.