prayers as he worked, and Dick looked at him with angry eyes.
"Why didn't you do that before?" he said; and then Depache straightened, with his melancholy, womanish face lighted exultantly.
"But it is that he will live," he cried. "See the blood come back under the skin? He will live."
Dick looked on the reddened flesh where the cloths were lifted. He saw the dark eyelashes quiver just a little, and he stood up and went to the door, feeling physically sick.
"For he doesn't know yet that his back is probably broken," he told himself. "He doesn't know that."
Behind him he heard Depache speak as one speaks to a man who yet belongs to the ordinary life of men, and that uncontrollable fear seized him again, chasing him out along the beach with hasty, unsteady feet. He could not face the consequences of this. He could not face that which Tempest might be facing now.
The scent of wood smoke drifted to him along the barren beach; the smell of rain was sweet and heavy in the air; lake and hills and sky lay colourless and softly tender where seabirds drifted over, sending down thin cries.
Dick did not know if it were mid-day or evening or early morning still. A strange, detached feeling of separation from all the natural things possessed him. There did not seem anything to do or anywhere to go. He was helpless; helpless to avert the consequences of his own passion; helpless in the hands of that omnipotent Life which flushes the veins of men for a little space, and then withdraws to fulfil itself in other forms.
Because Dick had never loved anyone as he loved Tempest he had never known grief before. He had never known the need of a God before. He had never known utter fear. He knew them all now, and he staggered under the weight of them. In a little while he would have to go back to Tempest. He would have to go, and the horror of that thought plucked all the defiant unbelief out of him for the time.
"God," he said with stammering lips. "Oh, God! Oh, God!"
And then he walked on, and walked back again, still keeping the edge of the bluff where he and Tempest had
