“Are you afraid?” she asked sharply, when he paused for a reply.
“Yes; I am afraid,” he answered. “There is no bravery in defying God.”
She half-lifted herself from the pillows, her brows contracted with an anxious frown, and she looked about the room as if in search of some one. He was startled by the change in her face. “Do you want anything?” he asked gently.
“Carl,” she called out, as if he were far away and out of her sight, “who was it said, ‘O God!—if there is a God—save my soul—if I have a soul’?”
She did not look at him, but leaned out of bed, staring wildly round the room. He tried to soothe her, and coax her back to her pillows again.
“Was it I said it?” she asked excitedly, resisting him, and sitting upright. “Was it I said it? It sounds like me, doesn’t it?”
He rang the bell, and Bird came in. But they could do nothing with her. She pushed them aside, leaned from the bed, and searched the room with her wild eyes, then looked upward,
and seemed to shrink, yet continued looking. “Was it I said it, Alice?” she cried out breathlessly. “It sounds like me, doesn’t it? ‘O God!—if there is a God—save my soul—if I have a soul!’”
“She is gone!” Carl whispered, and laid her back on the pillow.
So Carl Yorke was at last rich and free, with the world before him. There was but little for him to do at present. When winter should be near, the family were to come up and take possession of their old home, which would then be ready for them. Now that it was summer, he would go down and stay with them a while. If rest and pleasure were to be had there, he would have them. He felt like one who has travelled over a dusty, sultry road, and longs to plunge into a bath, and wash all that heat and dust away. He wanted to hear again at the home gatherings gentle voices, to see tender, thoughtful ways, to refresh his soul in that quiet yet rich atmosphere.