His eyes as she drew near, held the look of an animal that consciously awaits slaughter:
"How is she?"
As she did not answer at once, not knowing how to say what she must say, he caught her shoulder in a grip that spoke the madness of torture. "For God's sake, tell me!" he almost shouted.
"There is one chance in a hundred, Alexander," she said; "but there is one chance."
His head went up and his hand dropped.
Presently, with a convulsive breath:
"I've been a coward. I've dodged the doctor—couldn't ask him." His hands clenched. "Does she suffer?" he asked, and swung a look on her.
"No, she does not suffer," Annie answered. "She lies there very still as though she were asleep; and her husband stands outside the door and will not let anyone move in that part of the house. And in the front room, that strange young man who came the other day is lying dead. It seems he was sort of unbalanced, and it was he who set the fire; Ding Dong knows he did, for he tried to keep Ding Dong from giving the alarm. And then he drowned himself."
But her husband was interested in no one but Rachel. Haggard and unkempt, he stared at the water.
"I don't know anything about a God," he said slowly, "about a Creator, but if He—if she lives," he amended, "I'll take my oath to give her up as she plead with me to. I'll never trouble her again though it tears my heart out. I ask only that she shall live."