Her eyes, soft and dark and liquid as the eyes of a deer, sought Jean’s beseechingly.
“I am so sorry,” she repeated. And passed, slowly,—almost unwillingly, it seemed, out of the room, followed by Tormarin.
Jean raised her head from Blaise’s shoulder and pushed back her hair, damp with perspiration, from her forehead. It seemed to her as though she had been down, down into some awful, limitless abyss of darkness from which she was now feebly struggling back to a painful consciousness of material things. A great sea had surged over her head, blotting out everything, and remained poised above her like a huge black arch, imprisoning her in the vast, deserted chaos in which she found herself wandering. Then—after a long time, it seemed—it had surged away again and she could distinguish Blaise’s face bent above her.
“Then—then it’s true?” she said stupidly. Her voice sounded tiny, even to herself—a mere thread of sound.
Blaise made no answer. He only held her a little closer in his arms. She supposed he hadn’t heard that thin little thread of voice. She must try again.
“Is it true, Blaise? Is Nesta——” But somehow the last word wouldn’t come.
She felt his arm jerk against her side.
“Yes,” he said baldly. “It’s true. Nesta is alive. I’ve seen her.”
Jean said nothing. She knew it—had known it all the time the arched wall of sea had kept her down in that awful black waste where there had been neither warmth nor sunshine but only bitter, freezing cold and lightless space. She clung a little closer to Blaise, like a frightened, exhausted child.