Part 44

"To--to--you intended to burn----"

She nodded again, and closed her hands tightly on the book.

"Mark," she said solemnly. "It's an evil thing. Let it go."

His face changed. Astonishment died in fierce excitement.

"You're mad!" he said brutally.

And he struck her hands away from the book with his clenched fist. She did not cry out, but her face became utterly dogged. He saw that.

"D'you hear me?" he said.

"Yes."

His passion rose, as he began fully to grasp the enormity of the deed that his coming had prevented.

"You would destroy my labour, my very soul," he said hoarsely. "You who pretended to love me!"

"Because I love you," she said.

He laughed aloud.

"You hate me," he cried.

"I hate to see you do evil," she said.

"This is fanaticism," he muttered, looking at her obstinate white face, and steady eyes. "Sheer fanaticism."

It began almost to frighten him.

"You shall not do this evil," she said. "You shall not."

Mark stared at her for a moment. Then he turned away.

"I'll not argue with you," he said. "But, if you had done what you meant to do, if you had destroyed my labour, I would have recreated it, every sentence, every word."

"No, Mark!"

"I would, I would," he said. "The world shall have it, the world should have had it even then. Go to your room."

She left him. But her face had not changed or lost its expression.

She went upstairs slowly. And the spirit of her mother went with her. She felt sure of that.

* * * * *

When two days afterwards, late in the evening, Mark Sirrett suddenly died,--from poison, as was proved at Catherine's trial--she had no feeling that Mark was dead. That only came to her afterwards, as she sat by the body, awaiting the useless arrival of the doctor. She only knew that the stranger was gone, the stranger into whose wild eyes she had gazed for the first time in the Pavilion of Granada, when the world was golden beneath them and the roses touched his hair. She looked at the body, and she seemed to hear again the bell of the cathedral, filling the drowsy valley with terrible vibrations of romance. It was a passing bell. For God had stricken down "William Foster."

THE CRY OF THE CHILD.

PART I.

THE DEAD CHILD.