A new
spirit also had come into Parpon's eyes, gentler, less weird, less
distant. With the advent of their joy a great yearning came to save
Elise. They hung watchful, solicitous, over her bed.
It must go hard with her, and twenty-four hours would see the end or a
fresh beginning. She had fought back the fever too long, her brain and
emotions had been strung to a fatal pitch, and the disease, like a
hurricane, carried her on for hours, tearing at her being.
Her own mother sat in a corner, stricken and numb. At last she fell
asleep in her chair, but Parpon and his mother slept not at all. Now and
again the dwarf went to the door and looked out at the night, so still,
and full of the wonder of growth and rest.
Far up on Dalgrothe Mountain a soft brazen light lay like a shield
against the sky, a strange, hovering thing. Parpon knew it to be the
reflection of the campfires in the valley, where Lagroin and his men were
sleeping. There came, too, out of the general stillness, a long, low
murmur, as though nature were crooning: the untiring rustle of the river,
the water that rolled on and never came back again. Where did they all
go--those thousands of rivers for ever pouring on, lazily or wildly? What
motive? What purpose? Just to empty themselves into the greater waters,
there to be lost? Was it enough to travel on so inevitably to the end,
and be swallowed up?
And these millions of lives hurrying along? Was it worth while living,
only to grow older and older, and, coming, heavy with sleep, to the
Homestead of the Ages, enter a door that only opened inwards, and be
swallowed up in the twilight? Why arrest the travelling, however swift it
be? Sooner or later it must come--with dusk the end of it.
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