* * * * *

Just here there is a little rock-path to the south, going down to the water between rocks mixed with shrub-like little trees, three yards long: a path, or a lane, one might call it, for at the lower end the rocks and trees reach well over a tall man's head. There she had tied my boat to a slender linden-trunk: and sadder now than Gethsemane that familiar boat seemed to my eyes, for I knew very well that I should never enter it more. I walked up and down the path, awaiting her: and from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box of Swedish matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the plain end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible: and I awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and Rhadamanthus.

She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And 'Leda,' I said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going straight to the point, 'we are to part, as you guess—for ever, as you guess—for I see very well by your face that you guess. I, too, am very sorry, my little child, and heavy is my heart. To leave you ... alone ... in the world ... is—death for me. But it must, ah it must, be done.'

Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful—Confidence.

She did not say anything: so I went on.

'I have thought long,' said I, 'and I have made a plan—a plan which cannot be effective without your consent and co-operation: and the plan is this: we go from this place together—this same night—to some unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence—by train. There I get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going different ways. We shall thus never be able, however much we may want to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world. That is my plan.'

She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not long in coming.

'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.'

'That means that you refuse to do what I say?'

'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity.

'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman now. But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I left you, I should go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I should. Tell me, then—reflect well, and tell me—do you definitely refuse to part with me?'

The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm:

'Yes; I lefuse.'

I left her then, took a turn down the path, and came back.

'Then,' said I, 'here are two matches in my grasp: be good enough to draw one.'

Now she was hit to the heart: I saw her eyes widen to the width of horror, with a glassy stare: she had read of the drawing of lots in the Bible: she knew that it meant death for me, or for her.

But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand. I had fixed it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches, then she should die; if the longer, then I should die.

She drew the shorter....

* * * * *

This was only what I should have expected: for I knew that God loved her, and hated me.

But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would not be so bad, after all.

With a sudden movement I snatched the revolver from my pocket: she did not move, except her white lips, which, I think, whispered:

'Not yet....'

I stood with hanging arm, forefinger on trigger, looking at her. I saw her glance once at the weapon, and then she fixed her eyes upwards upon my face: and now that same smile, which had disappeared, was on her lips again, meaning confidence, meaning disdain.

I waited for her to open her mouth to say something—to stop that smile—that I might shoot her quick and sudden: and she would not, knowing that I could not kill her while she was smiling; and suddenly, all my pity and love for her changed into a strange resentment and rage against her, for she was purposely making hard for me what I was doing for her sake: and the bitter thought was in my mind: 'You are nothing to me: if you want to die, you do your own killing; and I will do my own killing.' And without one word to her, I strode away, and left her there.

I see now that this whole drawing of lots was nothing more than a farce: I never could have killed her, smiling, or no smiling: for to each thing and man is given a certain strength: and a thing cannot be stronger than its strength, strive as it may: it is so strong, and no stronger, and there is an end of the matter.

I walked up to the Grand Bailli's bureau, a room about twenty-five feet from the ground. By this time it was getting pretty dark, but I could see, by peering, the face of a grandfather's-clock which I had long since set going, and kept wound. It is on the north side of the room, over the writing-desk opposite the oriels. It then pointed to half-past six, and in order to fix some definite moment for the bitter effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I then locked the door which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and also the stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at the throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of one oriel. Some minutes later, at twenty-five to seven, I lit two candles on the desk, and sat to write to her, the pistol at my right hand; but I had hardly begun, when I thought that I heard a sound at the three-step door, which was only four feet to my left: a sound which resembled a scraping of her slipper; I stole to the door, and crouched, listening: but I could hear nothing further. I then returned to the desk, and set to writing, giving her some last directions for her life, telling her why I died, how I loved her, much better than my own soul, begging her to love me always, and to live on to please me, but if she would die, then to be sure to die near me. Tears were pouring down my face, when, turning, I saw her standing in a terrified pose hardly two feet behind me. The absolute stealth which had brought and put her there, unknown to me, was like miracle: for the ladder, whose top I saw intruding into the open oriel, I knew well, having often seen it in a room below, and its length was quite thirty feet, nor could its weight be trifling: yet I had heard not one hint of its impact upon the window. But there, at all events, she was, wan as a ghost.

Immediately, as my consciousness realised her, my hand instinctively went out to secure the weapon: but she darted upon it, and was an instant before me. I flew after her to wrench it away, but she flew, too: and before I caught her, had thrown it cleanly through two rungs of the ladder and the window. I dashed to the window, and after a hurried peer thought that I saw it below at the foot of a rock; away I flew to the stair-door, wrung open the lock, and down the stairs, three at a time, I ran to recover it. I remember being rather surprised that she did not follow, forgetting all about the ladder.

But with a horrid shock I was reminded of it the moment I reached the bottom, before ever I had passed from the house: for I heard the report of the weapon—that crack, my God! and crying out: 'Well, Lord, she has died for me, then!' I tottered forward, and tumbled upon her, where she lay under the incline of the ladder in her blood.

* * * * *

That night! what a night it was! of fingers shivering with haste, of harum-scarum quests and searches, of groans, and piteous appeals to God. For there were no surgical instruments, lint, anaesthetics, nor antiseptics that I knew of in the Chateau; and though I knew of a house in Montreux where I could find them, the distance was quite infinite, and the time an eternity in which to leave her all alone, bleeding to death; and, to my horror, I remembered that there was barely enough petrol in the motor, and the store usually kept in the house exhausted. However, I did it, leaving her there unconscious on her bed: but how I did it, and lived sane afterwards, that is another matter.

If I had not been a medical man, she must, I think, have died: for the bullet had broken the left fifth rib, had been deflected, and I found it buried in the upper part of the abdominal wall. I did not go from her bed-side: I did not sleep, though I nodded and staggered: for all things were nothing to me, but her: and for a frightfully long time she remained comatose. While she was still in this state I took her to a chalet beyond Villeneuve, three miles away on the mountain-side, a homely, but very salubrious place which I knew, imbedded in verdures, for I was desperate at her long collapse, and had hope in the higher air. And there after three more days, she opened her eyes, and smiled with me.

It was then that I said to myself: 'This is the noblest, sagest, and also the most loveable, of the creatures whom God has made in heaven or earth. She has won my life, and I will live.... But at least, to save myself, I will put the broadest Ocean that there is between her and me: for I wish to be a decent being, for the honour of my race, being the last, and to turn out trumps ... though I do love my dear, God knows....'

And thus, after only fifty-five days at the chalet, were we forced still further Westward.

* * * * *

I wished her to remain at Chillon, intending, myself, to start for the Americas, whence any sudden impulse to return to her could not be easily accomplished: but she refused, saying that she would come with me to the coast of France: and I could not say her no.

And at the coast, after thirteen days we arrived, three days before the New Year, traversing France by steam, air, and petrol traction.

We came to Havre—infirm, infirm of will that I was: for in my deep heart was the secret, hidden away from my own upper self, that, she being at Havre, and I at Portsmouth, we could still speak together.

We came humming into the dark town of Havre in a four-seat motor-car about ten in the evening of the 29th December: a raw bleak night, she, it was clear, poor thing, bitterly cramped with cold. I had some recollection of the place, for I had been there, and drove to the quays, near which I stopped at the Maire's large house, a palatial place overlooking the sea, in which she slept, I occupying another near.

The next morning I was early astir, searched in the mairie for a map of the town, where I also found a Bottin: I could thus locate the Telephone Exchange. In the Maire's house, which I had fixed upon to be her home, the telephone was set up in an alcove adjoining a very stately salon Louis Quinze; and though I knew that these little dry batteries would not be run down in twenty odd years, yet, fearing any weakness, I broke open the box, and substituted a new one from the Company's stores two streets away, at the same time noting the exchange-number of the instrument. This done, I went down among the ships by the wharves, and fixed upon the first old green air-boat that seemed fairly sound, broke open a near shop, procured some buckets of oil, and by three o'clock had tested and prepared my ship. It was a dull and mournful day, drizzling, chilly. I returned then to the mairie, where for the first time I saw her, and she was heavy of heart that day: but when I broke the news that she would be able to speak to me, every day, all day, first she was all incredulous astonishment, then, for a moment, her eyes turned white to Heaven, then she was skipping like a kid. We were together three precious hours, examining the place, and returning with stores of whatever she might require, till I saw darkness coming on, and we went down to the ship.

And when those long-dead screws awoke and moved, bearing me toward the Outer Basin, I saw her stand darkling, lonely, on the Quai through heart-rending murk and drizzly inclemency: and oh my God, the gloomy under-look of those red eyes, and the piteous out-push of that little lip, and the hurried burying of that face! My heart broke, for I had not given her even one little, last kiss, and she had been so good, quietly acquiescing, like a good wife, not attempting to force her presence upon me in the ship; and I left her there, all widowed, alone on the Continent of Europe, watching after me: and I went out to the bleak and dreary fields of the sea.

* * * * *

Arriving at Portsmouth the next morning, I made my residence in the first house in which I found an instrument, a spacious dwelling facing the Harbour Pier. I then hurried round to the Exchange, which is on the Hard near the Docks, a large red building with facings of Cornish moor-stone, a bank on the ground-floor, and the Exchange on the first. Here I plugged her number on to mine, ran back, rang—and, to my great thanksgiving, heard her speak. (This instrument, however, did not prove satisfactory: I broke the box, and put in another battery, and still the voice was muffled: finally, I furnished the middle room at the Exchange with a truckle-bed, stores, and a few things, and here have taken up residence.)

I believe that she lives and sleeps under the instrument, as I here live and sleep, sleep and live, under it. My instrument is quite near one of the harbour-windows, so that, hearing her, I can gaze out toward her over the expanse of waters, yet see her not; and she, too, looking over the sea toward me, can hear a voice from the azure depths of nowhere, yet see me not.

* * * * *

I this morning early to her:

'Good morning! Are you there?'

'Good morning! No: I am there,' says she.

'Well, that was what I asked—"are you there"?'

'But I not here, I am there,' says she.

'I know very well that you are not "here,"' said I, 'for I do not see you: but I asked if you were there, and you say "No," and then "Yes."'

'It is the paladox of the heart,' says she.

'The what?'

'The paladox,' says she.

'But still I do not understand: how can you be both there and not there?'

'If my ear is here, and I elsewhere?' says she.

'An operation?'

'Yes!' says she.

'What doctor?'

'A specialist!' says she.

'An ear-specialist?'

'A heart!' says she.

'And you let a heart-specialist operate on your ear?'

'On myself he operlated, and left the ear behind!' says she.

'Well, and how are you after it?'

'Fairly well. Are you?' says she.

'Quite well. Did you sleep well?'

'Except when you lang me up at midnight. I have had such a dleam ...'

'What?'

'I dleamed that I saw two little boys of the same age—only I could not see their faces, I never can see anybody's face, only yours and mine, mine and yours always—of the same age—playing in a wood....'

'Ah, I hope that one of them was not called Cain, my poor girl.'

'Not at all! neither of them! Suppose I tell a stoly, and say that one was called Caius and the other Tibelius, or one John and the other Jesus?'

'Ah. Well, tell me the dleam....'

'Now you do not deserve.'

'Well, what will you do to-day?'

'I? It is a lovely day ... have you nice weather in England?'

'Very.'

'Well, between eleven and twelve I will go out and gather Spling-flowers in the park, and cover the salon deep, deep. Wouldn't you like to be here?'

'Not I.'

'You would!'

'Why should I? I prefer England.'

'But Flance is nice too: and Flance wants to be fliends with England, and is waiting, oh waiting, for England to come over, and be fliends. Couldn't some lapplochement be negotiated?'

'Good-bye. This talking spoils my morning smoke....'

So we speak together across the sea, my God.

* * * * *

On the morning of the 8th April, when I had been separated thirteen weeks from her, I boarded several ships in the Inner Port, a lunacy in my heart, and selected what looked like a very swift boat, one of the smaller Atlantic air-steamers called the Stettin, which seemed to require the least labour in oiling, &c., in order to fit her for the sea: for the boat in which I had come to England was a mere tub, though sound, and I pined for the wings of a dove, that I might fly away to her, and be at rest.

I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the colour of ashes to my very lips. By half-past two o'clock I was finished, and by three was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, having said not one word about anything at the telephone, or even to my own guilty heart not a word. But in the silent depths of my being I felt this fact: that this must be a 35-knot boat, and that, if driven hard, hard, in spite of the heavy garment of seaweed which she trailed, she would do 30; also that Havre was 120 miles away, and at 7 P.M. I should be on its quay.

And when I was away, and out on the bright and breezy sea, I called to her, crying out: 'I am coming!' And I knew that she heard me, and that her heart leapt to meet me, for mine leapt, too, and felt her answering.

The sun went down: it set. I was tired of the day's work, and of standing at the high-set wheel; and I could not yet see the coast of France. And a thought smote me, and after another ten minutes I turned the ship's head back, my face screwed with pain, God knows, like a man whose thumbs are ground between the screws, and his body drawn out and out on the rack to tenuous length, and his flesh massacred with pincers: and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted with anguish: for I could not go to her. But after a time that paroxysm passed, and I rose up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering back for England: for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said: 'Oh no, no more. If I could bear it, I would, I would ... but if it is impossible, how can I? To-morrow night as the sun sets—without fail—so help me God—I will kill myself.'

* * * * *

So it is finished, my good God.

On the early morning of the next day, the 9th, I having come back to Portsmouth about eleven the previous night, when I bid her 'Good morning' through the telephone, she said 'Good morning,' and not another word. I said:

'I got my hookah-bowl broken last night, and shall be trying to mend it to-day.'

No answer.

'Are you there?' said I.

'Yes,' says she.

'Then why don't you answer?' said I.

'Where were you all yesterday?' says she.

'I went for a little cruise in the basin,' said I.

Silence for three minutes: then she says:

'What is the matter?'

'Matter?' said I, 'nothing!'

'Tell me!' she says—with such an intensity and rage, as to make me shudder.

'There is nothing to tell, Leda!'

'Oh, but how can you be so cluel to me?' she cries, and ah, there was anguish in that voice! 'There is something to tell—there is! Don't I know it vely well by your voice?'

Ah, the thought took me then, how, on the morrow, she would ring, and have no answer; and she would ring again, and have no answer; and she would ring all day, and ring, and ring; and for ever she would ring, with white-flowing hair and the staring eye-balls of frenzy, battering reproaches at the doors of God, and the Universe would cry back to her howls and ravings only one eternal answer of Silence, of Silence. And as I thought of that—for very pity, for very pity, my God—I could not help sobbing aloud:

'May God pity you, woman!'

I do not know if she heard it: she must, I think, have heard: but no reply came; and there I, shivering like the sheeted dead, stood waiting for her next word, waiting long, dreading, hoping for, her voice, thinking that if she spoke and sobbed but once, I should drop dead, dead, where I stood, or bite my tongue through, or shriek the high laugh of distraction. But when at last, after quite thirty or forty minutes she spoke, her voice was perfectly firm and calm. She said:

'Are you there?'

'Yes,' said I, 'yes, Leda.'

'What was the color,' says she, 'of the poison-cloud which destroyed the world?'

'Purple, Leda,' said I.

'And it had a smell like almonds or peach blossoms, did it not?' says she.

'Yes,' said I, 'yes.'

'Then,' says she, 'there is another eruption. Every now and again I seem to scent strange whiffs like that ... and there is a purple vapour in the East which glows and glows ... just see if you can see it....'

I flew across the room to an east window, threw up the grimy sash, and looked. But the view was barred by the plain brick back of a tall warehouse. I rushed back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two stairs, and out upon the Hard. For a minute I ran dodging wildly about, seeking a purview to the East, and finally ran up the dockyard, behind the storehouses to the Semaphore, and reached the top, panting for life. I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a bank of cloud to the north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of clear azure pallor. And back again I flew.

'I cannot see it...!' I cried.

'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said with decision.

'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!'

'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?'

'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then death—just think, together—on the same couch, for ever, heart to heart—how sweet!'

'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?'

'It travelled slowly before. Get quick—will you?—into one of the smaller boats by the quay—there is one just under the crane that is an air-boat—you have seen me turn on the air, haven't you?—that handle on the right as you descend the steps under the dial-thing—get first a bucket of oil from the shop next to the clock-tower in the quay-street, and throw it over everything that you see rusted. Only, spend no time—for me, my heaven! You can steer by the tiller and compass: well, the wheel is quite the same, only just the opposite. First unmoor, then to the handle, then to the wheel. The course is directly North-East by North. I will meet you on the sea—go now—'

I was wild with bliss. I thought that I should take her between my arms, and have the little freckles against my face, and taste her short firm-fleshed upper-lip, and moan upon her, and whimper upon her, and mutter upon her, and say 'My wife.' And even when I knew that she was gone from the telephone, I still stood there, hoarsely calling after her: 'My wife! My wife!'

* * * * *

I flew down to where the steamer lay moored that had borne me the previous day. Her joint speed with the speed of Leda's boat would be forty knots: in three hours we must meet. I had not the least fear of her dying before I saw her: for, apart from the deliberate movement of the vapour that first time, I fore-tasted and trusted my love, that she would surely come, and not fail: as dying saints fore-tasted and trusted Eternal Life.

I was no sooner on board the Stettin than her engines were straining under what was equivalent to forced draught. On the previous day it would have little surprised me at any moment, while I drove her, to be carried to the clouds in an explosion from her deep-rusted steel tanks: but this day such a fear never crossed my mind: for I knew very well that I was immortal till I saw her.

The sea was not only perfectly smooth, but placid, as on the previous day: only it seemed far placider, and the sun brighter, and there was a levity in the breezes that frilled the sea in fugitive dark patches, like frissons of tickling; and I thought that the morning was a true marriage-morning, and remembered that it was a Sabbath; and sweet odours our wedding would not lack of peach and almond, though, looking eastward, I could see no faintest sign of any purple cloud, but only rags of chiffon under the sun; and it would be an eternal wedding, for one day in our sight would be as a thousand years, and our thousand years of bliss would be but one day, and in the evening of all that eternity death would come and sweetly lay its finger upon our languid lids, and we should die of weary bliss; and all manner of dancings and singings—fandango and light galliard, corantoes and the solemn gavotte—were a-tune in my heart that happy day; and running by the chart-house to the wheel, I saw under the table a great roll of old flags, and presently they were flying in a long curve of gala from the main; and the sea rumpled in a long tract of tumbling milk behind me; and I hasted homeward, to meet my heart.

* * * * *

No purple cloud could I see as, on and on, for two hours, I tore southward: but at hot noon, on the weather beam I spied through the glass across the water something else which moved, and it was you who came to me, Oh Leda, my spirit's breath!

I bore down upon her, waving: and soon I saw her stand like an ancient mariner, but in white muslins that fluttered, at her wheel on the bridge—it was one of those little old Havre-Antwerp craft very high in the bows—and she waved a little white thing. And we came nearer, till I could spy her face, her smile, and I shouted her to stop, and in a minute stopped myself, and by happy steering came with slowing headway to a slight crash by her side, and ran down the trellised steps to her, and led her up; and on the deck, without saying a word, I fell to my knees before her, and I bowed my brow to the floor, with obeisance, and I worshipped her there as Heaven.

And we were wedded: for she, too, bowed the knee with me under the jovial blue sky; and under her eyes were the little moist semicircles of dreamy pensive fatigue, so dear and wifish: and God was there, and saw her kneel: for He loves the girl.

And I got the two ships apart, and they rested there some yards divided all the day, and we were in the main-deck cabin, where I had locked a door, so that no one might come in to be with my love and me.

* * * * *

I said to her:

'We will fly west to one of the Somersetshire coal-mines, or to one of the Cornwall tin-mines, and we will barricade ourselves against the cloud, and provision ourselves for six months—for it is perfectly feasible, and we have plenty of time, and no crowds to break down our barricades—and there in the deep earth we will live sweetly together, till the danger is overpast.'

And she smiled, and drew her hand across my face, and said:

'No, no: don't you tlust in my God? do you think He would leally let me die?'

For she has appropriated the Almighty God to herself, naming Him 'my God'—the impudence: though she generally knows what she is saying, too. And she would not fly the cloud.

And I am now writing three weeks later at a little place called Chateau-les-Roses, and no poison-cloud, and no sign of any poison-cloud, has come. And this I do not understand.

It may be that she divined that I was about to destroy myself ... she may be quite capable.... But no, I do not understand, and shall never ask her.

But this I understand: that it is the White who is Master here: that though he wins but by a hair, yet he wins, he wins: and since he wins, dance, dance, my heart.

I look for a race that shall resemble its Mother: nimble-witted, light-minded, pious—like her; all-human, ambidextrous, ambicephalous, two-eyed—like her; and if, like her, they talk the English language with all the r's turned into l's, I shall not care.

They will be vegetable-eaters, I suppose, when all the meat now extant is eaten up: but it is not certain that meat is good for men: and if it is really good, then they will invent a meat: for they will be her sons, and she, to the furthest cycle in which the female human mind is permitted to orbit, is, I swear, all-wise.

There was a preaching man—a Scotchman he was, named Macintosh, or something like that—who said that the last end of Man shall be well, and very well: and she says the same: and the agreement of these two makes a Truth. And to that I now say: Amen, Amen.

For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, ordain, and decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now: That the one Motto and Watch-word essentially proper to each human individual, and to the whole Race of Man, as distinct from other races in heaven or in earth, was always, and remains, even this: 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'

THE END.