"Anabal! Do you yield?"
"I yield."
Mechanically, again, she leaned forward and kissed him on the breast. The next moment his foot slipped. He reeled, staggered wildly. Anabal snatched her arm away.
Again he slipped and fell forward. He was now on the very edge of the ledge. His hand fell upon one of her feet. She stooped to push aside his arm. He raised it, caught at something, gave a wild cry, and shot into the dark, with heavy plunge and splash.
In the moonshine—for the yellow bloom had now expanded into a flood of rippling gold—she saw the black mass of his body whirled to and fro. Once the white face was turned to her—a blank disc. Twice, thrice, she saw the black arms move above the seething caldron in a strange, fantastic dance.
Then, in a moment, as from a bolt, the body was shot into the deep pool beyond the outer fang-like rocks of the Linn.
Anabal Gilchrist turned, the foam on the water not more wan than her white face.
With slow steps she regained the heathy ground. She did not look back once, then, nor as she clomb the long slope to her home.
VII
It was an hour before midnight when Oona awoke. So often had she slept in the woods, through the hot summer nights, that there was nothing strange or terrifying in the blackness of darkness about her. She could smell the pungent odour of the bracken, and, somewhere near, wild mint. The keen fragrance of the pines and firs everywhere prevailed.