The stars touched midnight.

The death scream he heard was not his, for his set teeth had hardly yet relaxed when it rang out; and the dreadful cry began with a woman’s shriek, and changed and ended as the yell of a beast.  And before the final blank overtook his dying eyes, he saw that She gave place to It; he saw more, that Life gave place to Death—­causelessly, incomprehensibly.

For he did not presume that no holy water could be more holy, more potent to destroy an evil thing than the life-blood of a pure heart poured out for another in free willing devotion.

His own true hidden reality that he had desired to know grew palpable, recognisable.  It seemed to him just this:  a great glad abounding hope that he had saved his brother; too expansive to be contained by the limited form of a sole man, it yearned for a new embodiment infinite as the stars.

What did it matter to that true reality that the man’s brain shrank, shrank, till it was nothing; that the man’s body could not retain the huge pain of his heart, and heaved it out through the red exit riven at the neck; that the black noise came again hurtling from behind, reinforced by that dissolved shape, and blotted out for ever the man’s sight, hearing, sense.

* * * * *

In the early grey of day Sweyn chanced upon the footprints of a man—­of a runner, as he saw by the shifted snow; and the direction they had taken aroused curiosity, since a little farther their line must be crossed by the edge of a sheer height.  He turned to trace them.  And so doing, the length of the stride struck his attention—­a stride long as his own if he ran.  He knew he was following Christian.

In his anger he had hardened himself to be indifferent to the night-long absence of his brother; but now, seeing where the footsteps went, he was seized with compunction and dread.  He had failed to give thought and care to his poor frantic twin, who might—­was it possible?—­have rushed to a frantic death.

His heart stood still when he came to the place where the leap had been taken.  A piled edge of snow had fallen too, and nothing but snow lay below when he peered.  Along the upper edge he ran for a furlong, till he came to a dip where he could slip and climb down, and then back again on the lower level to the pile of fallen snow.  There he saw that the vigorous running had started afresh.

He stood pondering; vexed that any man should have taken that leap where he had not ventured to follow; vexed that he had been beguiled to such painful emotions; guessing vainly at Christian’s object in this mad freak.  He began sauntering along, half unconsciously following his brother’s track; and so in a while he came to the place where the footprints were doubled.

Small prints were these others, small as a woman’s, though the pace from one to another was longer than that which the skirts of women allow.