“I say—­Monty,” stumblingly came the words, “you know—­I never dreamed of this.  I thought she would have married—­long ago.  And she has been waiting—­all these years?”

“All these years,” Herne said.

“Do you think she has suffered?” There was a certain sharpness in the question, as if it were hard to utter.

And Herne, pledged to honesty, made brief reply: 

“Yes.”

There followed a pause; then: 

“Will it grieve her—­very badly—­to know that I am dead?” asked the voice beside him.

“Yes, it will grieve her.”  Herne spoke as if compelled.

“But she will get over it, eh?”

“I believe so.”  Herne’s lips were dry; he forced them to utterance.

The free hand fastened claw-like upon his arm.

“You’ll tell me the straight truth, man,” said Bobby’s voice in his ear.  “What if I—­came to life?”

But Herne was silent.  He could not bring himself to answer.

“Speak out!” urged the voice—­Bobby’s voice, quick, insistent, even imploring.  “Don’t be afraid!  I haven’t any feelings left worth considering.  She wouldn’t get over that, you think?  No woman could!”

Herne turned in desperation, and faced his questioner.

“God knows!” he said helplessly.

Again there fell a silence, such a silence as falls in a death-chamber at the moment of the spirit’s passing.  The darkness was deepening.  Herne could scarcely discern the figure by his side.

The hand upon his arm had grown slack.  All vitality seemed to have gone out of it.  It was as though the spirit had passed indeed.  And in the stillness Herne knew that he was recrossing the gulf, that his friend—­the boy he had known and loved—­was receding rapidly, rapidly behind the veil of years, would soon be lost to him for ever.

The voice that spoke to him at length was the voice of a stranger.

“Remember,” it said, “Bobby Duncannon is dead—­has been dead for years!  Let no woman waste her life waiting for him, for he will never return!  Let her marry instead the man who wants her, and put the empty years behind!  In no other way will she find happiness.”

“But you?” Herne groaned.  “You?”

The hand he held had slipped from his grasp.  Through the dimness he saw the man beside him rise to his feet.  A moment he stood; then flung up his arms above his head in a fierce gesture of renunciation that sent a stab of recollection through Herne.

“I!  I go to my people!” said the Prophet of the Wandis.  “And you—­will go to yours.”

It was final, and Herne knew it; yet his heart cried out within him for the friend he had lost.  Suddenly he found he could not bear it.

“Bobby!  Bobby!” he burst forth impulsively.  “Stop, man, stop and think!  There must be some other way.  You can’t—­you shan’t—­go back!”

He hardly knew what he said, so great was his distress.  The gulf was widening, widening, and he was powerless.  He knew that it could never be bridged again.