As she crossed the sidewalk to her car, an eddy of wind raised up before her, head high, a whirl of snowflakes that resembled a wraith for one moment, before it was whipped away into the darkness.
PART TWO
CHAPTER XV
A month after that stormy night when Lilla had felt the impact of some far-off gush of feeling, the newspapers published a despatch reporting the death of Lawrence Teck at the hands of savages. Four months passed, however, before Lilla received a letter from Parr, the valet.
It had happened in the country of the Mambava. That tribe, despite their well-known animosity to strangers, had not been hostile to Lawrence. Indeed, he had won the friendship of their king. Yet it was in the king's stronghold that the tragedy had happened.
There had been a beer dance, a disorderly festival ending in a clash between the Mambava warriors and Lawrence's camp police. Almost without warning the rifles had cracked, the spears had begun to fly. Lawrence, throwing himself between the parties, had been among the first to fall. Then a frenzy had seized the savages; a panic, the intruders. It had been a massacre—a headlong flight amid the Mambava forests, through which Parr, himself badly wounded, and half the time unconscious, had been dragged by five Mohammedan survivors. They had gained an outpost fort where, ever since, Parr had lain hovering between life and death, not only crippled by his wounds, but also stricken with the black-water fever. Then, at last, he had gathered strength enough to scrawl these lines.
CHAPTER XVI
Her friends were surprised that she "took it as well as she did." Considering her emotional legacy, they had expected a collapse. On the contrary she remained, as it seemed, almost passionless. She did not show even that desire for sympathy which is characteristic of hysterical natures.