The girl started back with a low cry, caused either by alarm on finding him so near her or by horror at the change in his aspect. If the latter, there was abundant cause. For she had left him hungry, she found him starving; she had left him haggard, she found him with eyes unnaturally large, his temples hollow, his lips dry, his chin unshaven. It was indeed a mask rather than a face, a staring mask of famine, that looked out of the dusky room at her, and looked not the less pitifully, not the less wofully, because, as soon as its owner took in her identity, the mask tried to smile.
"Mother of God!" she whispered. Her face had grown nearly as white as his. "O Mother of God!" She had imagined nothing like this.
And Colonel John, believing—his throat was so dry that he could not speak at once—that he read pity as well as horror in her face, felt a sob rise in his breast. He tried to smile the more bravely for that, and presently he found his voice, a queer, husky voice.
"You must not leave me—too long," he said. His smile was becoming ghastly.
She drew in her breath, and averted her face, to hide, he hoped, the effect of the sight upon her. Or perhaps—for he saw her shudder—she was mutely calling the sunlit lake on which her eyes rested, the blue sky, the smiling summer scene, to witness against this foul cruelty, this dark wickedness.
But it seemed that he deceived himself. For when she turned her face to him again, though it was still colourless, it was hard and set.
"You must sign," she said. "You must sign the paper."
His parched lips opened, but he did not answer. He was as one struck dumb.
"You must sign!" she repeated insistently. "Do you hear? You must sign!"
Still he did not answer; he only looked at her with eyes of infinite reproach. The pity of it! The pity of it! She, a woman, a girl, whom compassion should have constrained, whose tender heart should have bled for him, could see him tortured, could aid in the work, and cry "Sign!"