With a cry she sprang forward to intervene.  She flung herself between them in an agony.  One of them—­Trevor—­caught her in his arms.  The other staggered backwards and fell upon the sand.  She saw his dead face as he lay....

“Oh, Trevor!” she cried in anguish.  “Trevor!  Trevor!”

He held her closely to him.  She felt his hand laid in soothing on her head.  Gasping, she opened her eyes upon his face.

“That’s better,” he said gently.  “You’ve had a bad dream.”

“Was it a dream?” she asked him wildly.  “Was it a dream?”

And then she remembered that Bertrand had fallen asleep in the very early hours of the morning, and that they had led her away to another room to rest.  Worn out in mind and body, she had yielded.  She marvelled now that she had been so easily persuaded.

She turned within the circle of her husband’s arm.  “Trevor, you promised you would call me if he waked.”

His hand was still upon her head; its touch was sustaining, subtly comforting.  “He did not wake, dear,” he said.

The words were few, but in a flash she knew the truth.  Her eyes grew wide and dark.  Her clinging hands tightened upon his arm.  She made no sound of any sort.  She even ceased to breathe.

He drew her head down upon his shoulder, and held her fast pressed against his breast.  “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

But she remained tense in his arms, till her rigidity and silence alarmed him.  He began to rub her cold cheek.

“Chris, speak to me!”

She turned her face into his breast, and with relief he heard her begin to breathe again.  But she did not speak.  She only lay there dumbly in crushed stillness.

For a while he waited, but at last, as she made no movement, he spoke again.  “Chris, would you like me to leave you?”

That reached her.  She turned her face quickly upwards.  “No, Trevor.”

The wide, strained look was still in her eyes, but they did not flinch from his.

“I knew he was dead,” she said, speaking very quickly, “when I woke up just now.  I thought—­I thought—­” She broke off, as if she could not continue.  “And afterwards—­directly I saw you by my side—­I knew it was true.  Trevor”—­the piteous note sounded again in her voice—­“why are you not afraid of death?”

“Because I don’t believe in it,” he said.

“But yet—­but yet—­” Her words faltered away into silence.

He laid his hand again upon her head.  “My dear, death is purely physical.  You know it in your heart as well as I do.  Death is the passing of the spirit—­no more than that.”

She uttered a deep sigh.  “Oh, Trevor, I wish I wasn’t so wicked.”

His hand began to caress her hair.  “I don’t think you know what wickedness is, dear,” he said.

“But I do—­I do!” she protested.  “I—­I am almost terrified sometimes when I realize it.  And I feel as if—­as if—­Bertie wouldn’t have been taken away—­if I hadn’t loved him so.”  Her voice sank, she hid her face a little lower.