She only knew she had them in a bundle in her hands, and Humphrey was off, then there struck on her ear a crash of sound, and through it one thin high shriek and a long wailing.
For a second her eyes floated in darkness, then the express thundered on and she could see a confused mass of men and women bending down over something.
“That distinct definite shriek was awful!” Gwen found herself thinking, with curious composure, though she knew perfectly well that her husband had very likely lost his life to save that of a congenital idiot.
He was only stunned, however, and the infant had got off scot-free.
When he came to her, Gwen was very white in sheer disgust at her own want of emotion, and Strange knew as distinctly as if she had told him the cause of her pallor.
He would not wait for the books, but turned the horses’ heads homewards and set off at a smart trot.
“That amiable infant,” he said, when they had cleared the village, “it seems, felt itself moved to commit suicide in order to spite its nurse; it has been a long-standing threat, the woman says. It threw itself on its stomach before the in-coming train. By Jove! It was a close shave, we only got off by the skin of our teeth!”
She would have liked to touch him, to let her eyes melt in his sight, to make her lips tremble, but she could not for the life of her. She knew he had acted like a hero, but as she had known before, he couldn’t do any other thing when the call came; it did not seem in any way to alter matters.
Then she began to speculate as to what would have happened if perchance he had not come off by the skin of his teeth. She looked curiously at him and wondered.
“I haven’t a notion,” she concluded at last, and she was silent for a long time and very pale.