So the minutes passed, and the crowds of Camhaven fisherfolk giving up hope of more excitement here tonight, sought it elsewhere, though already a murmur had come out of the fog that there was no immediate danger; a big ship was on the sunken rocks, and had established communication with the shore. That was all.
And still the minutes passed, and Ned stood holding Helen's hand in his.
Yet there was no sign of returning feet upon the fireproof stair.
A little breeze springing up had drifted the smoke south-west, obscuring the balcony so they could see nothing.
Those who knew her began to look at her with pitying eyes. Then in an instant something in which all else was forgotten--a sharp sound like the crack of a rifle, a quick upburst of sparks, then a great crash, and for a few moments silence and darkness.
"I'll take her home, Lord Blackborough," said Peter Ramsay, for all her height lifting her easily. "You will be wanted here. Mr. Hirsch, I may use your motor?"
"Broken," replied Mr. Hirsch, who was as white as a sheet, the tears almost running down his cheeks. "I drove it myself, and I didn't understand, but the Wrexham's is here. My God! what a frightful thing--_shrecklich! schrecklich!_" His voice shook; these things were not in the bond.
Yet one bond had been kept, for in an hour's time, when the flames had eaten their full of the frail thing which had dared to usurp Cam's point, they found Sir Geoffrey half-way down the stair caught in a trap between two gaps in what had been scheduled as a fire-proof staircase.
He held the child in his arms, her head, wrapped in his coat to preserve her from the smoke, nestled close upon his breast.
"For ever never an-naye!" That promise anyhow had been kept as a Pentreath should have kept it!
Early dawn in a house where the new-dead lie unheeding whether it be darkness or day. Dawn when those who have seen the light of life fade from a beloved face watch the slow sunlight steal once more over the edge of the world, and claim all things for its own.
Yet watching alone, how peaceful such a dawn may be, when one can face death, not as a thing apart, but as a part of life; when there is no need to cloud its kindly form with sentimentalities, when we need not drug ourselves into disregarding its dignity by some narcotic of belief in life to come, when it is enough to feel that this life has passed where all life goes.