“One last experiment,” thought Strange, laughing aloud in a grim spasm of humour. “Gwen!” he shouted, “will you kiss me once, as women kiss men?”
She might have done it without that clause, she changed colour for the first time, her mouth twitched, she loosed her hands from their half-mechanical grasp on the seat, and looked in her husband’s face laughing above her.
No tears ever held the pathos of that laugh.
“Why can’t I kiss him and be done with it?” she thought wildly. “Truth or lie, what matters it now!”
She moved forward slightly with curved lips, then she looked again, one little look, but it was enough, her hands fell limp into her lap, and she shivered from head to foot.
“No!” she shouted, her eyes aflame, “if that had been possible I shouldn’t have left it until now.”
Then she pulled herself together to show a decent front to death.
The silent laugh on Strange’s face broke into sound, above all the bedlam of clang and yell, then it ceased suddenly.
Great gouts of blood and foam flew to right and left from the lips and nostrils of the horses, who were blind now in their anguish.
“Hold tight, Gwen!” roared her husband hoarsely.