The woman--who had stood, frozen with horror, her eyes fixed upon the face of the dying man, as though under a dreadful spell--cowered before him, livid with fear. Cringing, helpless--as though before some infernal monster--she hid her face; while her husband, struggling for breath to make her hear, called her every foul name he could master--derided her with fiendish glee--mocked her, taunted her, cursed her--with words too vile to print. With an oath and a profane wish for her future upon his lips, the end came. The sensual mouth opened--the diseased wasted limbs shuddered--the insane light in the lust-worn eyes went out.
With a scream, Mrs. Taine sank unconscious upon the floor beside the bed.
From the lower part of the house came the faint sounds of the few remaining revelers.
When Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange left the house on Fairlands Heights that night, they walked quickly, as though eager to escape from the brilliantly lighted vicinity. Neither spoke until they were some distance away. Then the novelist, checking his quick stride, pointed toward the shadowy bulk of the mountains that heaved their mighty crests and peaks in solemn grandeur high into the midnight sky.
"Well, boy," he said, "the mountains are still there. It's good to see them again, isn't it?"
Reaching home, the older man bade his friend good night. But the artist, declaring that he was not yet ready to turn in, went, with pipe and Czar for company, to sit for a while on the porch.
Looking away over the dark mass of the orange groves to the distant peaks, he lived over again, in his thoughts, those weeks of comradeship with Sibyl Andrés in the hills. Every incident of their friendship he recalled--every hour they had spent together amid the scenes she loved--reviewing every conversation--questioning searching, wondering, hoping, fearing.
Later, he went out into the rose garden--her garden--where the air was fragrant with the perfume of the flowers she tended with such loving care. In the soft, still darkness of the night, the place seemed haunted by her presence. Quietly, he moved here and there among the roses--to the little gate in the Ragged Robin hedge, through which she came and went; to the vine-covered arbor where she had watched him at his work; and to the spot where she had stood, day after day, with hands outstretched in greeting, while he worked to make the colors and lines upon his canvas tell the secret of her loveliness. He remembered how he had felt her presence in those days when he had laughingly insisted to Conrad Lagrange that the place was haunted. He remembered how, even when she was unknown to him, her music had always moved him--how her message from the hills had seemed to call to the best that was in him.