“Yes!”
X
There was a terrible pause. For a moment a breathless silence seemed to prevail, both outside the house and inside. Then they heard the wind leap up and come howling back, rattling the windows. Faunce began to talk again with a dry throat:
“He was dying. If I had stayed, I should have died, too. I tell you I couldn’t stand it! A mortal terror had seized me, and I simply couldn’t stand up against it. I had to go!”
The doctor leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on his visitor, but he did not interrupt. He was, in fact, at the moment too much astonished to speak.
“I asked you, a while ago, if you had ever been afraid of death,” Faunce went on. “It wasn’t a fair question. You couldn’t answer it, because you’ve never faced a death like that. I had never been a coward before, but it seized me then—fear, naked, hideous fear! It ground me and tore me. I tell you I couldn’t resist it. I—I had to go!” he repeated again.
“You left him; you got to the cache,” Dr. Gerry managed to say at last; “and then you and the men returned—you must have returned—to find his body!”
“Yes, I went back—oh, God!” Faunce shrank with a gesture of horror. “Why do you ask me? Of course, we went back as soon as we could. But what did we find? Drifted snow-banks, ice—ice—ice! There was no trace of the body—he lay deep down in that awful waste!”
The doctor had pulled himself still farther forward in his chair, peering at the younger man curiously.
“Do you think you found the place?”