How pale she was, he thought, and how sad those dear gray eyes looked, as she turned to him and asked that question that he so dreaded to hear!
'We are out of the station now, and I can hear better. What was the accident, Michael? How did it all happen? Tell me everything, please.'
Then, as far as he was able, he told her all, and she heard him very quietly, though once he felt the shudder that passed through her when she first understood the nature of the terrible thing that had happened.
'Abercrombie saw it all from the first,' he went on; 'he said he never saw anything so splendidly done. Not a man in a thousand would have ventured it. What did I tell you, Audrey?—that Blake was just the fellow to win the Victoria Cross.'
'He was very brave,' she murmured; but she trembled all over as she spoke.
'He was more than brave. What was my action in Zululand compared to his? He stepped into the jaws of death quietly, and with his eyes opened, for he must have known that two could not have been saved. He has given his noble life for a wretched worthless one. It sounds inhuman to say it, but who would have mourned if that poor old man had been swept away? Would it not have been better if he had left him to his fate?'
'You must not say that!' returned Audrey. And now the tears were running down her face. 'It is this that makes it so noble, so Christ-like—a life laid down out of love and pity for the worthless. My brave Cyril! Who is more fit to go than he? Ah, I knew him so well; he is very reserved; he is not one to speak of religion—very few young men do; he never liked to do so; but in a simple, manly way he has tried to live it. I always knew he was good. Yes, Michael, it was better for him to give up his fresh young life than for that old man to die in his sins.'
He could not steady his voice to answer her. Would any other girl have taken it in this way? He felt there were depths in her nature that he had not fathomed yet. The nobleness of the action seemed to lift her up out of her grief. The heroic death was a fit ending to that brave life, short as it was.
There were a few minutes' silence, during which she wept quietly, and then she roused herself to ask after Mrs. Blake. A deeper shade passed over Michael's face as she put the question.
'Poor soul!' he returned in a grieved voice; 'I fear it will go very hardly with her. Abercrombie tried to say a word to her about her son's hopeless condition, but she dropped at his feet like a dead thing. I had to leave him with her, and go back to poor Blake, as he was asking for her. I am afraid Abercrombie had to be very stern with her, for by and by she crept in quietly enough, and sat down beside him. When I left he was talking to her, but I do not believe that she understood a word that he said; she looks as though she has been turned to stone.'