Inez was thrown over the low wall, landing without injury in the cornfield on the other side. Alfonse jumped, and found himself torn and bruised upon the road, with no injuries which could not easily be mended. But Armstrong, sitting nearest to the point of contact, lay amid the wreckage of the machine, still and lifeless, with a gash in the side of his head, showing where he had struck the wall.
By the time Inez had found an opening Alfonse had gathered himself up, and together they lifted Armstrong on to the grass by the side of the road. Two frightened women and a boy hurried out from the peasant’s cottage near by, the women wringing their hands, the boy stupefied by fear.
“Some water, quick!” commanded Inez; and one of the women hastened to obey.
Wetting her handkerchief and kneeling beside the still figure, Inez bathed Armstrong’s face and washed the blood from the ugly cut. She chafed his hands and felt his pulse. There was no response, and she turned her ashen face to the women watching breathless beside her.
“He is dead,” she said, in an almost inarticulate voice. The women crossed themselves and burst into tears.
“May we take him in there,” she asked, pointing to the cottage, “while the chauffeur brings his wife?”
Between them the body was gently lifted into the cottage and laid upon the bed in the best room. Then Alfonse set out upon his solemn mission.
“Leave me with him,” Inez begged rather than commanded the woman who remained. “I will stay with him until they come.”
She closed the door. Leaning against it for support, with her hand upon the latch, she gazed at the inanimate form upon the bed. The necessity of action had dulled her realization of the horror, and, sinking upon the floor, she buried her face in her hands, giving way for the first time to the tears which until now had been denied. The first paroxysm over, she raised her head and looked about the room. Every object in it burned itself into her mind: the straw matting on the floor, the cheap prints upon the wall, the rough cross and the crucified Saviour hanging over the bed. Dead—dead!
“Oh, God,” she murmured, incoherently, to herself, “is this to be the solution of this awful problem—inexplicable in life, unendurable in death!”