The bystanders worked elsewhere, but Crosson lingered to protect Irene. In the dark he could hear Drury whispering something to her.
He pleaded, wheedled, kissed her hand, mumbled it like a dog, reasoned with her insanely, while she trembled all over, a shivering leaf on a blown twig.
Crosson could hear occasional phrases: "If you love me, you will—if you love me, Reny. What do you want me to suffer for, honey? You don't want me just to suffer—just to suffer, do you—you don't, do you? Reny honey, Reny? You say you love me, and you won't do the thing that will help me. You don't love me. That's it, you don't really love me!"
She turned to Crosson at last and moaned: "He wants me to kill him! What can I do? Oh, what is there to do?"
Crosson could not bear to look in her eyes. He could not bear the sound of Drury's voice. He could not even debate that problem. He was cravenly glad when somebody's hand seized him and a rough voice called him away to other toil. He slunk off.
There were miseries enough wherever he went, but they were the miseries of strangers. He could not forget Irene and the riddle of duty that was hers. He avoided the spot where she was closeted with grief, and worked remote in the glimmer from bonfires lighted in the fields alongside.
The fire in the wreck was out now, save that here and there little blazes appeared, only to be quenched at once. But smoldering timbers crackled like rifle-shots, and there were thunderous slidings of wreckage.
Irene's mother and father had stood off at a distance for a long time, but at length they missed Irene and came over to question Crosson. He knew that Irene would not wish them present at such obsequies, and he told them she had gone home.
After a time, curiosity nagged him into approaching her hiding-place. He listened, and there was no sound. He peered in and dimly descried Drury. He was not moving; he might have been asleep. Irene might have been asleep, too, for she lay huddled up in what space there was.
Crosson knelt down and crawled in. She was unconscious. He touched Drury with a dreading hand, which drew quickly back as from a contact with ice.