'She clasped his ankles with her thin, white hands, and laid her face on his dusty shoes.
'The whole audience stood dumb before this manifestation of a great love. Enraged, bitter, jealous as was each heart, there was not a man but would at that moment have sacrificed his own love that she might be blessed. Even Mitchell, in one of those rare spirit-flashes when the soul is shown bare in the lightning, asked himself, 'Can I not love her? But the soul answered, 'No.' He stooped, unclasped the clinging hands, and turned resolutely away.'
'"You are a fool," said the Doctor. 'No other woman will ever love you as she does.'
'He stepped down from the platform and crossed the church, the silent crowd making a way for him as he passed along; he went out in the sunshine, through the village, down towards the beach,--they saw him no more.
'The Lady had fainted. The men bore her back to the lodge and tended her with gentle care one week,--two weeks,--three weeks. Then she died.
'They were all around her; she smiled upon them all, and called them all by name, bidding them farewell. 'Forgive me,' she whispered to the Doctor. The Nightingale sang a hymn, sang as he had never sung before. Black Andy knelt at her feet. For some minutes she lay scarcely breathing; then suddenly she opened her fading eyes. 'Friends,' she murmured, 'I am well punished. I thought myself holy,--I held myself above my kind,--but God has shown me I am the weakest of them all.'
'The men buried her with tender hands. Then in a kind of blind fury against Fate, they tore down her empty lodge and destroyed its every fragment; in their grim determination they even smoothed over the ground and planted shrubs and bushes, so that the very location might be lost. But they did not stay to see the change. In a month the camp broke up of itself, the town was abandoned, and the island deserted for good and all; I doubt whether any of the men ever came back or even stopped when passing by. Probably I am the only one. Thirty years ago,--thirty years ago!'
'That Mitchell was a great fool,' I said, after a long pause. 'The Doctor was worth twenty of him; for that matter, so was Black Andy. I only hope the fellow was well punished for his stupidity.'