The week of storm ended, and the sun blazed out over a landscape bedecked with autumn’s royal colours. Helga, who had risen early to go to the beach, found at her place an envelope which had not come by mail. There was an enclosure in a woman’s handwriting. Once and again she went through, turning from red to white. Then she turned to Dick Colton.
“You did this?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Oh, I cannot, I cannot!” she cried passionately, and ran from the door, out upon the knolls.
Dick saw her climbing the hill, the joyous wind wreathing the curves of her lithe and gracious form, to the place where Haynes was buried, and watched her until a shoulder of the knoll shut her completely from view.
“It was high time for an antidote,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “Haynes would have bade me do it; I know he would.”
Helga knelt by a high boulder that crowned the knoll and arranged the flowers that she had brought up that morning for her friend’s grave.
“Oh, Petit Père,” she whispered sobbingly, “if you only were here to tell me! It is hard to know what is best. So hard!”
Something moved in the bushes not far away. The shrubbery parted, and there emerged on all fours the squat and powerful figure of “The Wonderful Whalley.” He was unkempt and white; the murderousness was gone from his face. As a dog cringes, expectant of a blow, he moved reluctantly forward. The girl faced him with a tense carriage in which was no inkling of fear.
“Ze lady shall forgive ze poor arteest,” he said, holding out hands of supplication.