"She's forcing her own life, her vitality into her friend; she's
practically raising the dead!"

"_Lor_, Sir!"

He had just raised his hand to touch Leonie, praying to heaven for the
girl's reason, when she suddenly flung back her head.

Up through the house-top, to the stars, the heavens, rushed the terrible
cry, wailing as wails the wolf who has lost its mate, insisting as
insists one who has staked his all on one final throw, imploring as
implores the mother in the last dire throes of childbirth.

What the language was, what the words meant, to whom the prayer was
addressed, no one knew.

But at the third terrible appeal to God, or Fate, or Death, or Life, and
even as those who listened outside and those who ceased their labours in
the room stuffed their ears with their fingers and sobbed, little Jessica
opened her eyes, and smiled just as Leonie, flinging up her arms, crashed
face downwards on the floor.




CHAPTER XII

"The fix'd events of Fate's remote decrees."--_Pope_.