The cry that
rang through the sleeping woods, seemed to paralyze him--he
stood like one bereft of reason, sense and life. Perhaps the
very suddenness of the event overpowered him. Heaven only knows
what passed in his dull, crazed mind while the girl he loved sank
without help. Was it that he would not save her for another
that in his cruel love he preferred to know her dead, beneath the
cold waters, rather than the living, happy wife of another man?
Or was it that in the sudden shock and terror he never thought of
trying to save her?
He stood for hours--it seemed to him as years--watching the
spot where the pale, agonized face had vanished--watching the
eddying ripples and the green reeds. Yet he never sought to save
her--never plunged into the deep waters whence he might have
rescued her had he wished. He never moved. He felt no fatigue.
The first thing that roused him was a gleam of gray light in the
eastern sky, and the sweet, faint song of a little bird.
Then he saw that the day had broken. He said to himself, with a
wild horrible laugh, that he had watched all night by her grave.
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