Just the flash of an eyelid, and Jardine was pursuing his majestic course over the grass, his back-view impervious to criticism and comment. Not until the last glimpse of his black coat-tails had disappeared behind the yew-bushes did Ferlie rise to her feet and face Cyprian beside the laughing faun. Again that illusory sightlessness filmed her dilated pupils. She looked through him and beyond into a blank pall of darkness.
"Cyprian," the voice was dead like her face, "Take me away."
He fancied the half-human leering thing of stone stirred in evil exultation. The twisted weather-beaten features made an unholy contrast to those others of still soft flesh on a level with them.
"I have nothing more to say to you than that," she said, when he did not answer. "I will tell you nothing more. Whether you go with us or not, John and I leave here to-night—in time. You could not trust me five years ago; can you trust me now?"
"It was not you five years ago; it was my own creed that I could not trust."
"But now it is different, Cyprian. You have out-lived one stage of self-mistrust now."
Did man ever arrive beyond the reach of that urging Power in a world peopled with mortal flesh, he wondered.
Strange that, in forcing a decision upon himself concerning Ferlie's future, Cyprian forgot the very existence of Hla Byu and his son. It was not his intention to conceal from Ferlie the temporary loss of will-power which had changed the tenour of his life during the last two years. But the Burmese girl, received in a moment of sick physical weakness and retained in pure apathy of soul, had existed so mistily for the real Cyprian that, the practical arrangements for her safe-keeping concluded, she simply slipped out of the picture. When he did remember her she had become so superfluous among the host of living memories he and Ferlie were storing up that he could not bring himself to recall her, even by speech.
"I know too thoroughly by what means the latent forces of the body can accomplish the spirit's murder"—she was speaking again and he recollected himself—"But you and I have nothing to do with such perishable links. Nor do we require witnesses to ratify a spiritual marriage for which we should not have been prepared without these last enforced years of disciplined control."
She stopped, confronted with his unyielding silence, and, all at once, grew limp and human by that other inhuman watcher in stone. Her shoulders relaxed, bowed and aged beneath their invisible burden.