“If that man still lives he’ll come back again!”
“No! no!”
“He’ll come back and get you.”
“You wouldn’t let him, would you?”
“You belong to him, in a way. It is the Lord’s will.”
He could say that and believe it! The young zealot could worship a god who could doom, ten thousand years before its birth, a child to a thousand, thousand years of fiery torment because of an Adam likewise doomed to his disobedience.
The young man’s own agony had benumbed him perhaps, but RoBards could have leapt from the window and strangled him as a more loathsome, a clammier reptile than Jud Lasher. But he, too, was numb with astonishment.
Then the boy went human all at once and began to sob, to wail, “Oh, Immy, Immy! my poor Immy!”
RoBards stepped forward to the window in a rush of happiness, and saw Immy put out her hands to her lover. He pushed them away and rose and moved blindly across the grass. But there was a heavy dew and he stepped back to the walk to keep his feet from getting wet.
He stumbled along the path to the gate and leaned there a moment, sobbing. Then he swung it wide as he ran out to where his horse was tied. And the gate beat back and forth, creaking, like a rusty heart.