“You used to kiss me,” she said; “you cannot kill a woman you used to kiss years ago.  Oh, spare me, spare me!”

He set his lips and placed the muzzle of the pistol against her head.  She shivered at the contact, and her teeth began to chatter.

He could not do it.  He must let her go, and leave her to fate.  After all, she could hurt him no more, for before another sun had set he would be beyond her reach.

His pistol hand fell against his side, and he looked down with loathing not unmixed with pity at the abject human snake who was writing at his feet.

She caught his eye, and her faculties, sharpened by the imminent peril, read relentment there.  For the moment, at any rate, he was softened.  If she could master him now while he was off his guard—­he was not a very strong man!  But the pistol——­

Slowly, still groaning out supplications, she rose to her feet.

“Yes,” he said, “be quiet while I think if I can spare you,” and he half turned his head away from her.  For a moment nothing was heard but the rush of the gale and the roll of the wheels running over and under bridges.

This was her opportunity.  All her natural ferocity arose within her, intensified a hundred times by the instinct of self-protection.  With a sudden blow she struck the pistol from his hand; it fell upon the floor of the carriage.  And then with a scream she sprang like a wild cat straight at his throat.  So sudden was the attack that the long lean hands were gripping his windpipe before he knew it had been made.  Back she bore him, though he seized her round the waist.  She was the heavier of the two, and back they went, crash against the carriage door.

It gave!  Oh, God, the worn catch gave!  Out together, out with a yell of despair into the night and the raging gale; down together through sixty feet of space into the black river beneath.  Down together, deep into the watery depths—­into the abyss of Death.

The train rushed on, the wild winds blew, and the night was as the night had been.  But there in the black water, though there was never a star to see them, there, locked together in death as they had been locked together in life, the fierce glare of hate and terror yet staring from their glazed eyes, two bodies rolled over and over as they sped silently towards the sea.

CHAPTER XXXVII

SISTER AGNES

Ten days had passed.  The tragedy had echoed through all the land.  Numberless articles and paragraphs had been written in numberless papers, and numberless theories had been built upon them.  But the echoes were already beginning to die away.  Both actors in the dim event were dead, and there was no pending trial to keep the public interest alive.

The two corpses, still linked in that fierce dying grip, had been picked up on a mudbank.  An inquest had been held, at which an open verdict was returned, and they were buried.  Other events had occurred, the papers were filled with the reports of new tragedies, and the affair of the country lawyer who committed bigamy and together with his lawful wife came to a tragic and mysterious end began to be forgotten.