Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/31

 forced him to fight against his will. He fired the first time in the air. My pistol missed; then I seemed to lose my senses, and ran toward him shooting as I went. He fired once to save himself—"

The woman's loosened hair, black as the darkness into which he was drifting, hung about him; she put her hand in his and carried it to his lips. He pressed a faint kiss upon her pale fingers, and then pushed the hand away; it was his last action. Consciousness then left him, never to return; and twenty minutes later the crystal mirror held before his lips remained unclouded, the mass of wild dark hair heaped upon his bosom was unstirred by the faintest breath. All was over. Since that mute gesture of avoidance, that putting aside of her clinging hands, the woman had not moved; not more still than she was the dead form beside her. She had watched him with untrembling eyelids, all intelligence had left her face; it was as if her longing soul was clinging to the out-going spirit, even as her hands clung to his helpless hands, which in the last hour had pushed hers aside.

She might have striven to follow him on the first stage of that dark journey,—in vain; for the color came back to her marble cheek, the expression to her dark eyes. She leaned over him as if to kiss his forehead for the last time; but the