the thought came to him like a
dagger stroke, that this was so. Her act in freeing him had brought
about the final climax, and as a result of it, Kedsty was dead.

He went to the foot of the stair. Quietly, in his shoeless feet, he
began to climb them. He wanted to cry out Marette's name even before he
came to the top. He wanted to reach up to her with his arms
outstretched. But he came silently to her door and looked in.

She lay in a crumpled, huddled heap on her bed. Her face was hidden,
and all about her lay her smothering hair. For a moment he was
frightened. He could not see that she was breathing. So still was she
that she was like one dead.

His footsteps were unheard as he moved across the room. He knelt down
beside her, reached out his arms, and gathered her into them.

"Marette!" he cried in a low voice.

He felt the sudden quiver, like a little shock, that ran through her.
He crushed his face down, so that it lay in her hair, still damp from
its wetting. He drew her closer, tightening his arms about her slender
body, and a little cry came from her a cry that was a broken thing, a
sob without tears.

"Marette!"

It was all he said. It was all he could say in that moment when his
heart was beating like a drum against her breast. And then he felt the
slow pressure of her hands against him, saw her white face, her wide,
staring eyes within a few inches of his own, and she drew away from
him, back against the wall, still huddled like a child on the bed, with
her eyes fixed on him in a way that frightened him. There were no tears
in them. She had not been crying. But her face was as white as he had
seen it down in Kedsty's room. Some of the horror and shock had gone
out of it. In it was another look as her eyes glowed upon Kent. It was
a look of incredulity, of disbelief, a thing slowly fading away under
the miracle of an amazing revelation. The truth thrust itself upon him.

Marette had not expected that he would come to her like this. She had
believed that he would take flight into the night, escaping from her as
he would have run from a plague. She put up her two hands, in the trick
they had of groping at her white throat, and her lips formed a word
which she did not speak.

Kent, to his own amazement, was smiling and still on his knees. He
pulled himself to his feet, and stood up straight, looking down at her
in that same strange, comforting, all-powerful way. The thrill of it
was passing into her