"Doubtless it has repassed into its elements."
"Then that is the last sign."
Saltfleet glanced towards Arsinal's lifeless form.
"There will be another inquest, which will be thought queer. But stranger things must be for us two."
She replied:
"I will go to live in the far North. I cannot breathe here."
"I have no wife, and I am clean of women."
"That had to be. … Yet give thanks that you are to break no living heart. For me are two I dare not think of. …"
And she added:
"I beg you always to forget such small beauty as I may have. … And I beg you to propose no vows—no ceremonies. I could not enter the church of a foreign God on a false pretence. I could not ask the sanction of society."
"Your word shall rule in everything."
"You are to gain no honour of me."
"A man born out of wedlock may well scorn opinion."
"Who, then, was your mother?" asked Ingrid, viewing him steadfastly.
"Rightly you assume her dead. She was the best of mortal women: and not of this land."
"You will tell me of her afterwards."
Saltfleet went across to cover the face of the dead. Then they departed from the Tor together, gleaming still as to their faces, leaving Arsinal there to be the quiet witness of those happenings.
But when they had descended to the stream, and had passed it, there sounded from the top of the hill they had quitted a long and low, yet mighty, roll of thunder, which they knew to be the first of a storm that was to make their homeward journey terrible.
THE END
Devil's Tor Page 60
