He watched for Marie, but
there was no sign of her.
He was half an hour, perhaps, in reaching the Waldheim. As he
turned in at the gate he noticed a sledge, with a dozen people
following it, coming toward him. It was a singularly silent
party. Peter, with his hand on the door-knocker, watched its
approach with some curiosity.
It stopped, and the men who had been following closed up round
it. Even then Peter did not understand. He did not understand
until he saw Stewart, limp and unconscious, lifted out of the
straw and carried toward him.
Suicide may be moral cowardice; but it requires physical bravery.
And Marie was not brave. The balcony had attracted her: it opened
possibilities of escape, of unceasing regret and repentance for
Stewart, of publicity that would mean an end to the situation.
But every inch of her soul was craven at the thought. She crept
out often and looked down, and as often drew back, shuddering. To
fall down, down on to the tree tops, to be dropped from branch to
branch, a broken thing, and perhaps even not yet dead--that was
the unthinkable thing, to live for a time and suffer!
Stewart was not ignorant of all that went on in her mind. She had
threatened him with the balcony, just as, earlier in the winter,
it had been a window-ledge with which she had frightened him. But
there was this difference, whereas before he had drawn her back
from the window and clapped her into sanity, now he let her
alone.
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