“I’m going to get Carmody’s gun,” she said, beginning to walk away.  “He had one.  I saw it.  I don’t suppose he’ll mind lending it to me.”

CHAPTER XXIV

There are illnesses that take possession of their victims slowly and quietly, with an imperceptible start, and a gradual crescendo of envelopment; others there are, that strike, sudden as a hawk, or a bullet.  And this is true also of that other illness, the fever of the mind and heart that is called Love.  An old song says, and says, for the most part, truly,

  “I attempt from Love’s sickness to fly in vain.”

Larry Coppinger did not attempt to fly, even though he knew as precisely the moment when the fever struck him, as did Peter’s wife’s mother when her fever left her.  Perhaps he might then have tried to escape; he knew it was too late now.  That fatal rapturous moment had been when he saw Christian setting forth, a lonely, piteous figure, to fetch Carmody’s gun.  He had followed her, and his entreaties to her to let him deal with the matter had prevailed.  She had turned back, and kneeling down again, kissed the white star on Nancy’s forehead, murmuring something to her that Larry could not hear.  He had put her saddle on his own horse; when he mounted her, she had stooped down from the tall horse’s back, and had whispered:  “’That thou hast to do, do quickly.’” He went over it all in his mind; that was all she had said, and he had not seen her since.

On that afternoon as he moved about the room he had chosen for his studio, and unpacked the monster cases he had brought from Paris, he remembered how, long ago, Mrs. Twomey had laughed at him when he told her he was never going to marry.

“Wait awhile!"’ mocked Mrs. Twomey, “one day it’ll sthrike ye all in the minute—­the same as a pairson’d get a stitch when they’d be leaning-over a churn!”

Well, it had so struck him, and struck him hard, and he was reeling from the blow.

Her courage, oh God! her courage!  How she had ridden that little mad devil of a mare!  There wasn’t a man out who would have got her over that big country as she had!  And then, when that cur had done his dirty work and bolted, was there a whimper or a cry from her?  She had faced the music; she had started off to get the gun herself.  He knew, just a little, just dimly, he told himself humbly, what the sight of suffering was to her, and she had stood up to it.  She, with her passion for animals; she, with her tender, tender heart!  Larry, who believed himself to be profoundly introspective, did not know that it was his own flawless physical courage, finding and recognising its fellow in Christian, that had first lit the flame.  He thought it was her face, with its delicate charm, its faint, elusive loveliness, that had felled him, laid him low, devastated him.  He pleased himself in reiterating his overthrow, in enumerating its causes, while he banged bundles