“Eleanor.”
“Yes, I live.”
His hand swept across his forehead. “O God, ’tis a dream—again a dream.”
Yet now another hand touched his brow, and, where sight had failed, that single touch convinced him.
“I am not alone,” he said.
She grasped his hand feebly. “Nay, not alone. I think ’twas a trance. All the grief, the sudden happiness, the terror, the joy, o’ercame me. Yet—yet—I am sore wounded.” Her eyes closed; she breathed with an effort. “Whence came the shot?”
“From Frazer, even as he died.”
An expression, first of pain, then of absolute peace, crossed her face; but she made no rejoinder, for strength again had failed.
He brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead, stifling a deep moan. For once his very soul seemed falling to an abyss of fear. Fatalism was overcome by yearning, the power of endurance by the acute agony of doubt. Uncertainty laid an icy chill upon his spirit—the spirit of a child lost in the universe. Essential grief stood face to face with essential joy, each expecting, yet despairing of the victory. And the result of this meeting seemed to ravage the elements of being.
Once more Eleanor gazed up to his anguished face.