His delirious fury lasted but a moment. It then subsided as quickly as it had come, leaving him limp, exhausted, dull-eyed and panting like some run-down animal. A more pitiable sight than he then became, as he began to weep, shaken by the convulsive sobs which sometimes possess the frame of a man, Adam hoped he should never be obliged to witness.
Well as he understood that the sight of himself had precipitated this painful episode, Adam was also now aware that the old man, for the moment, saw and comprehended nothing. He therefore lifted him tenderly up in his arms and carried him into the house, placing him gently down on a lounge which he readily saw had been recently employed for the old man’s couch.
Garde had followed, her hands clasped together, the look of a tired mother in her face, making it infinitely sweet and patient.
“Garde, dear, forgive me,” said Adam. “I came too soon to see you.”
“Oh Adam!” she said, sadly. “In a few days, a week, dear, he is sure to be better.”
“Is there anything I can do?” said Adam, from the depths of his distress and sympathy and love.
“Oh, he is coming back to himself. Go, Adam, please,” said Garde, “don’t wait, dear, please. Come back to the gate, this evening.”
Adam went without so much as waiting to say good-by, for Garde had turned to her grandfather quickly, and anything further he might have said he abandoned, when David feebly spoke.
Depressed by the whole affair immeasurably, Adam was still too exalted by love’s great flight to dwell for long upon old Donner’s mania. His worries for Garde, in her tribulations, however, were strewn like sad flowers of thought through his reverie. He longed to help her, yet he knew how utterly impossible such a thing would be.
Walking aimlessly, he came before long to the harbor shore. The melted emerald and sapphire, which the sea was rolling against the rocks, with sparkles of captured sunlight glinting endlessly through and upon the lazy billows, gave him the greatest possible sense of delight. He sat down on a rock where the green velvet moss had dried like fur, after a wetting.