"
"Then, by your good leave, I shall do what I came to do."
She bent her head in acquiescence.
"You will find the--the person whom you wish to see in your old room in
the north gable. Shall I have Anthony light you up?"
"No; I can find the way."
My hand was on the stair rail when the cruel irony of it struck me like
a blow. She had planned the loosing of the bond in the very room where
we had knelt to take the good father's blessing upon it.
I stepped back, stumbled, I should say, for a curious weakness had come
upon me, and drew her arm in mine.
"We will go together, if you please, my lady. 'Tis only just to me that
you should hear what I must say to Father Matthieu."
And so, dear heart! she bore with me to the last; and together we
climbed the stair to come into the upper corridor with the room of
destiny at its farther end.
We came as far as the door; I mind it perfectly, for I remember marking
that the wooden bar my father had put upon it was gone, and the iron
brackets as well. But whilst I was groping for the latch there came a
taste of blood in my mouth, and I heard my dear lady's voice as if she
were calling to me across the eternal abysses. "Monsieur John!--you are
hurt!" And then, from a still remoter distance: "Oh, Father
Matthieu--Dick! come quickly! He is dying!"
LI
IN WHICH THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT
Which one of you, my dears, faring across the frontier of the shadow
land of dreams into the no less mysterious country of the real, can not
recall the struggle of the waking senses to knot up the gossamer
filament of the night's fantasies with the coarser web of reality?
For a time, longer or shorter as the dream thread holds, the vagaries of
the night are shuttled into the warp of life.
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