I clutched close my dressing-gown and stumbled to my feet, trying in vain to restrain my silly teeth from chattering. "Never mind about me, Fanny," I muttered. "They don't waste inquests on changelings."
"My God!" was her vindictive comment, "how she harps on the word. As if I had nothing else to worry about." With a contemptuous foot she pushed my empty box under cover of a low-growing yew. Seemingly Wanderslore was fated to entomb one by one all my discarded possessions.
Turning, she stifled a yawn with a sound very like a groan. "Then it's au revoir, Midgetina. Give me five minutes' start.... You know I am grateful?"
"Yes, Fanny," I said obediently, smiling up into her face.
"Won't you kiss me?" she said. "Tout comprendre, you know, c'est tout pardonner."
"Why, Fanny," I replied; "no, thank you. I prefer plain English."
But scarcely a minute had separated us when I sprang up and pursued her a few paces into the shadows, into which she had disappeared. To forgive all—how piteously easy now that she was gone. She had tried to conceal it, brazen it out, but unutterable wretchedness had lurked in every fold of her cloak, in the accents of her voice, in every fatigued gesture. Her very eyes had shone the more lustrously in the starlight for the dark shadows around them. But understand her—I could not even guess what horrible secret trouble she had been concealing from me. And beyond that, too—a hideous, selfish dread—my guilty mind was haunted by the fear of what she might do in her extremity.
"Fanny, Fanny," I called falsely into the silence. "Oh, come back! I love you; indeed I love you."
How little blessed it is at times even to give. No answer came. I threw myself on the ground. And I strove with myself in the darkness, crushing out every thought as it floated into my mind, and sinking on and on into the depths of unconsciousness.
"Oh, my dear, my dear," came the whisper of a tender, guttural voice in my ear. "You are deathly cold. Why do you grieve so? She is gone. Listen, listen. They have neither love nor pity. And I—I cannot live without you."