Aloof from the crowd, Mr. Clitheroe was striding up and down beside the wagons, with the eager, unobserving tramp of a man concerned with nothing but a morbid purpose of his own. He had bought of some discharged soldier a long military surtout, blue-gray, with a cape. Wearing this, he marched to and fro like a sentry. His thin, gray hair and long, bifid beard gave him a ghastly look; and then he trod his beat as if it were a doom,—as if he were a sentinel over his own last evasive hope.
“Drapetomania!” I thought, “and a hopeless case.”
A knock at my door, and the brawny corporaless summoned me to Miss Clitheroe.
“We are going,” she said. “Take me to him!”
Did she love him?
I braved Dr. Pathie’s displeasure, and led her to the bedside of the lover.
Brent was still in a stupor. We were alone.
She stood looking at him a moment. He was breathing, but unconscious; dead to the outer world and her presence. She stood looking at him, and seeming with her large, solemn eyes to review those scenes of terror and of relief since she had known him. Tears gathered in the brave, quiet eyes.
Suddenly she stooped and kissed his forehead. Then she passionately kissed his lips. She grew to him as if she would interfuse anew that ichor of love into his being.
She turned to me, all crimsoned, but self-possessed.