"The wind is coming again. Across the sea, across the mountains, over the plains. It is the wind of the desert. Can't you hear it?"
She shook her head. She could hear nothing but his thin thread of voice.
"I am going with it, and this time I shan't come back. Good-bye, Annette."
"Good-bye, Dick."
His eyes dwelt on hers, with a mute appeal in them. The forebreath of the abyss was upon him, the shadow of "the outer dark."
She understood, and kissed him on the forehead with a great tenderness, and leaned her cold cheek against his.
And as she stooped she heard the mighty wind of which he spoke. Its rushing filled her ears, it filled the little chamber where those two poor things had suffered together, and had in a way ministered to each other.
And the sick-room with its gilt mirror and its tawdry wall-paper, and the evil picture never absent from Annette's brain, stooped and blended into one, and wavered together as a flame wavers in a draught, and then together vanished away.
"The wind is taking us both," Annette thought, as her eyes closed.