Another moment and he arose.  “I am hungry.  I have not eaten since daybreak.  As for sleep—­I don’t know when I slept.  It is not only the darkness of the storm; it is growing late.  I think that we will hear nothing to-night.  We will sleep, and I need it.”  He moved to a table and took up the pair of holsters which, on entering, he had laid there In a corner of the room stood a heavy chest of drawers.  He placed the holsters in one of these, locked the drawer, and withdrew the key.  “I’ll think that out,” he muttered, “just as soon as may be,” then turned again to his wife.  “I’ll go now and get some meat and wine.  Stay here by the fire, Jacqueline, and try to see that all this must be fought, and fought as I have said!  Think of yourself, and think of Deb, Unity, your uncles—­at last you will come to see that there is no other way.”

He was gone.  Jacqueline dragged herself from the chair to the hearth, sank down before the glowing logs, and saw at once a picture of the river road.

* * * * *

She had been lying throughout the night almost without motion, but toward three o’clock he was aware that she had left the bed.  A moment, and he heard the tap of her slippers across the polished floor of the chamber, the hail, and the dining-room.  She paused, he could tell, at the sideboard; when, presently, she slipped again into bed, she was trembling violently.  He turned and put his arms about her.  “I am so cold,” she said.  “It is cold indoors and out-of-doors.”

“I have brought you misery,” he answered, and then lay in silence.

They heard the clock ticking, and the sighing of the branches after the storm.  For awhile she was quiet within his clasp, then the shuddering recommenced.  He arose, put on his dressing-gown, and, going to the fireplace where the logs yet smouldered, threw on light wood and built a cheerful fire, then took her in his arms and carried her to the great chair of flowered chintz, set in the light of the dancing flames.  “The wine will warm you.  Look, too, what a fire I have made!”

She still shuddered, staring over her shoulder.  “Draw the blinds closer.  There’s a sound as of some one sighing.”

“It is the wind in the beech leaves.”

She put an arm across her eyes.  “How long is he to lie there, stretched out upon the wet rocks, beside the stream?  Oh, heartless!”

“The storm and darkness have made it long.  He will be found this morning.”

“He never was your enemy, Lewis.  You thought him that, but he never was, he never was!”

“I want to tell you,” he said, “that all rage is dead.  I feel as though I had left anger far behind, and why there was in my mind so great venom and rancour I no longer know.  Envy and jealousy, too, are gone.  They have been struck out of life, and other things have come to take their place.”

“Ay,” she cried, “what other things!  O God, O God!”