“Here’s a light, ma’am,” he called.
She glided silently out of the gloom, her garments gleaming ghostlike and her white face with its luminous eyes, dark and strange as midnight, looking like a woman’s face in tragic dreams. As she took the candle her hand touched Adam’s.
“Thank you,” she said. “Please don’t call me ma’am. My name is Magdalene Virey.”
“I’ll try to remember.... Has your husband come to yet?”
“No. He seems to have fallen into a stupor. Won’t you look at him?”
Adam followed her inside and saw that she marked his lofty height. The shack had not been built for anyone of his stature.
“How tall you are!” she murmured.
The candle did not throw a bright light, yet by its aid Adam made out the features of the man whose life he had saved. It seemed to Adam to be the face of a Lucifer whose fiendish passions were now restrained by sleep. Whoever this man was, he had suffered a broken heart and ruined life.
“He’s asleep,” said Adam. “That’s not a trance or stupor. He’s worn out. I believe it’d be better not to wake him.”
“You think so?” she replied, with quick relief.