Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/27

 to have sunk into his soul and left him swaying sick with terror.

"Save you!"—Varge, like an outraged judge, was summing up his terrible arraignment. "Save you from the punishment of a crime too awful to speak aloud! Save you because I owe gratitude to the one whose life an inhuman son has taken! It would be better to end it here myself than to let you escape. It would be better to end—"

Slowly, very slowly, Varge's fingers relaxed—slowly, as though some unseen power, stronger than himself, plucked them one by one from the hold to which they clung, lingering, reluctant to let go. A limp thing dropped from his grasp and fell across the bed. And slowly, very slowly, Varge's hands crept through the darkness and clasped themselves over his own temples.

It came shadowy at first, as though just beyond the range of mental vision, eluding it; it came then gradually more and more distinct, as if folds of some gauzy texture—each fold transparent in itself, the whole but a misty covering that no more than blurred the object that it veiled—were being drawn aside one after the other. And now he saw clearly. Breathing, living, pulsing life, a picture, hallowed, softened, from the brush of the Master Painter was lifted up to his gaze—the silvered hair, with its old-lace cap, smoothly parted across the fair, white brow; the tiny furrows in the skin, scarcely discernible, as though age, regretful of its part to touch at all, had touched with gentle, reverent hand; the grey eyes, soft and tender, looking into his, full of trust, pure, serene, calm; the lips, half-parted, smiling at him with the loving, happy smile he knew so well—the face, full