And Pond's strong heart turned a little when he saw her eyes, so
circled, so dark with tears that were to come.
"Your cousins are waiting, aren't they?... And don't you think your
father might need you?"
A little spasm distorted the lovely face, unveiled now.
She inclined her head. Pond walked away toward the door; stood there
silently, drawing a finger over faded panels. Behind him was the absence
of all sound: the wordlessness of partings that were final for
this world....
She had seen in his great dignity the man who had given to the House of
Heth the last full measure of his confidence. And it was as his little
friend had said. He was beautiful with the best of all his looks; the
look he had worn yesterday in the library, as he went to meet her
poor father.
They had slain him, and yet he trusted.
No design of hers had led her alone beside this resting-place: that was
chance, or it was God. But now it seemed that otherwise it would
henceforward not have been bearable. For with this first near touch of
death, there had come, strangely hand in hand, her first vision of the
Internal. The look of this spirit was not toward time, and over the body
of this death there had descended the robe of a more abundant Life.
So she turned quickly and came away....
She was outside now. The door was shut behind. And she was walking with
Mr. Pond down the corridor, which was so long, echoing so emptily. She
became aware that her knees were trembling. And Corinne's fear now
was hers.
She desired to be at once where no one could see her. But at the head of
the grand stairway, in the desolating loneliness, Mr. Pond stopped
walking. And then he held a hand of hers between two of his; pressed it
hard, released it.
He was speaking in a voice that seemed vaguely unlike his own.
"It's hard for you--for your father--for all of us down here. His life
was needed ... wonderfully, for such a boy. And yet.... How could a man
wish it better with himself? He wouldn't, that I'm sure of.... Gave away
his life every day, and at the end flung it all out at once, to save a
factory negro. Don't you know that if he'd lived a thousand years, he
could never have put one touch to that?"