So Bellair sat between them, holding their hands, but powerless to help.... It was higher, looking out of the eyes of the body, in strange solution with the fallen humanity of the face they knew. And Bellair knew he was responsible.
“You must depart. You do not belong here,” a voice said. Bellair could not tell if it were Fleury’s or the woman’s or his own. It may have been merely a thought.
The thing had uprisen now. It lurched in the sway of the boat. Fleury and he were standing to meet the body that hurled itself forward.... Water dashed over them. They were beneath the monster. Bellair felt more than the crush of the weight of flesh, a force kindred to electricity, but not electric, a smothering defiling dynamics, that despoiled him by the low, cold depth of its vibration, rather than by the fierce fury of it. Then he thought of the woman’s child. It came to him like a pure gleam. The child must live. The thought was very real, out of the self, but not for self.... It seemed that he heard the heart of Stackhouse break, and the demon hiss away.
Bellair looked up from the bottom of the boat. The woman’s face was very close, his face between her hands.
“... Yes, come back to us!” she was saying. “Oh, we could not live without you——”
It did not seem real to him for a moment. He turned from her merciful eyes. Fleury was sitting there in the centre, holding the child with hands that trembled. The boat rode lightly, though water lay in the bottom. He turned farther. Yes, the seat in the stern was empty.
“He is dead?” Bellair whispered.
“Yes,” she answered.
“And we did not kill him,” Fleury added.
“But how did he get overside?”