The laugh shook the wounded lung. Her face turned from white to grey, her teeth clenched. There was a spasm as of a sudden wrenching loose from the body, then it sank back, collapsed, motionless, against Talbot's breast.
The two men carried her out between them. The crowd made way for them, standing on either side in respectful silence. Such incidents were not uncommon, and excited nothing more than a dull and transient interest. They took her out, and the gold for which two lives had been sacrificed was left unheeded, scattered in the dust. They went out the way they had come, through the noisome court, up the narrow flight of rotten, slippery stairs into the pure icy air.
Stephen turned to Talbot and took the girl's body wholly into his arms.
"I want to carry her up to my cabin," he said in a choking voice, and the other nodded.
The night was glorious with the deadly glory of the Arctic regions; the air was still, and of a coldness that seemed to bite deep into the flesh; but overhead, in the impenetrable blackness of the sky, the stars shone with a brilliance found only in the north, throwing a cold light over the snowy ground. To the south and east, low down, burned two enormous planets, like fiery eyes watching them over the horizon.
Slowly the two men walked over the hard ground. Not another living being was within sight.
Stephen walked first with heavy, uneven steps, and his breath came quickly in suppressed and sobbing gasps. Talbot followed closely, deep in painful thought. All had happened so suddenly. The whole horrible tragedy had swept over them in a few minutes; she had passed away from them both for ever. His brain seemed dazed by the shock. He could not realise it. He saw her dark head lying on Stephen's shoulder. It seemed as if she must lift it every second. He could not believe that she was lifeless, lifeless, this creature who had always been life itself, with her gay smiles, and light tones, and quick movements. Now, she and they were blotted out for all time. She had died against his breast, and for him. That was the horrible thought; it came into his brain after all the others, suddenly, and seemed as if it must burst it. And why, why should she have done it? Her last words rang in his ears, "mere devilry." So she had always been; reckless, open-handed, generous, she had often risked her life for another, and now she had given it for him. And in her last words she had tried to minimise her own act, tried to relieve him of the burden of a hopeless gratitude. But for all that he would have to bear it, and it seemed crushing him now. That she should have given her life, so young, less than half his own, so full of value and promise, for his! It seemed as if a reproach must follow him to the end of his days.
He walked as in a dream. He had no sense of the distance they were going, hardly any of the direction, except that he was following mechanically Stephen's slow, uneven, halting footsteps, and watching that little head that lay on his shoulder. Once when Stephen paused, he stretched out his arms and offered to take the burden from him, but Stephen repulsed him fiercely, and then the two went on slowly as before, how long he did not know, it seemed a long time. Suddenly, in the middle of the narrow pathway before him, Talbot saw Stephen stagger, fall to his knees, and then sink heavily sideways in the snow, his arms still tightly locked round the rigid body of the girl. Talbot hurried forward and bent over him, feeling hastily in his own pockets for his flask. Stephen's eyes were wide open and gazed up at him with a hopeless, despairing determination that went to Talbot's heart and chilled it.
"I can't go any farther, not another step," he muttered.
Talbot had been searching hurriedly through all his pockets for the flask he always carried.