She sat down upon the floor beside the couch and laid her head on the dead man's heart. Peter knew it was to listen for a flutter there, but with his sensitive apprehension of all emotion, he felt also that she was glad to put her head upon MacLeod's breast. He was conscious of being useless in his inactivity, but he could only stand and stare down at them, the dead man and the mourning woman. Presently Electra got up and stood, dry-eyed, and looked at him.
"He was coming to me," she said, in awe at the loneliness of the event. "I couldn't sleep last night. I wish I had known a little more. Instead of thinking about him, I could have met him. I could have been with him."
Electra was not listening. She had placed her hand on the hair of the fallen man, tenderly and yet with reverence.
"He is splendid, Peter, isn't he?" she said, as if she wondered at life and its fleeting forms. "He looks like a god, sleeping." Some echo of her words came back to her, and she felt a momentary pleasure at their sound. Then, very shortly it seemed, men came, the doctor and others who had authority, and Electra was turned out of the room.
But she stepped out, bare-headed, into the air.
"No," she answered, "I am going to tell his daughter."
"No!" Suddenly Peter remembered how little she was fitted to be a kindly messenger. "No, Electra. I will go."
Electra looked at him in a calm surprise.
"He would wish it," she said. "He would wish me to do everything." And she was gone.
Peter went back into the room, where there were quick voices and peremptory demands. Markham MacLeod was being interrogated in a way that had never befallen him before. His body was being asked to bear witness of the fashion by which it had come to its dumb estate, wherein it could not compel others, but was most ruthlessly at their will.
Rose, at grannie's knee, in a mute gratitude that now she was to stay here, because it had been wonderfully decreed, saw Electra coming up the walk. She ran to meet her light-heartedly; in her flooding delight it seemed to her as if even Electra might acquiesce in her reprieve.
At the foot of the steps they met, Rose all pleadingness, as if again she begged Electra to love her. But Electra delivered her news straightway. She felt like nothing but the messenger of MacLeod.