Notwithstanding | Page 9

away into the unknown.

The old doctor thrust out his under lip and did what he could.
By Dick's wish, Annette remained in the room, but he did not need her.
His French was good enough. He knew exactly what he wanted. The
notary was intelligent, and brought with him a draft for Dick's signature.
Dick dictated and whispered earnestly to him.
"Oui, oui," said the notary at intervals. "Parfaitement. Monsieur peut se
fier ˆ moi."
At last it was done, and Dick, panting, had made a kind of signature,
his writing dwindling down to a faint scrawl after the words "Richard
Le Geyt," which were fairly legible.
The doctor attested it.
"She must witness it too," said Dick insistently, pointing to Annette.
The notary glanced at the will, realized that she was not a legatee, and
put the pen in her hand, showing her where to sign.
"Madame will write here."
He indicated the place under his own crabbed signature.
She wrote mechanically her full name: Annette Georges.
"But, madame," said the notary, bewildered, "is not then Madame's
name the same as Monsieur's?"
"Madame is so lately married that she sometimes signs her old name by
mistake," said the doctor, smiling sadly. He took a pained interest in the
young couple, especially in Annette.
"I am not Monsieur's wife," said Annette.
The notary stared, bowed, and gathered up his papers. The doctor
busied himself with the sick man, spent and livid on his pillow.

"Approach then, madame," he said, with a great respect. "It is you
Monsieur needs." And he withdrew with the notary.
Annette groped her way to the bed. The room had become very dark.
The floor rose in long waves beneath her feet, but she managed to reach
the bed and sink down beside it.
What matter now if she were tired. She had done what he asked of her.
She had not failed him. What matter if she sank deeper still, down and
down, as she was sinking now.
"Annette." Dick's voice was almost extinct.
"Here."
"The wind is coming again. Across the sea, across the mountains, over
the plains. It is the wind of the desert. Can't you hear it?"
She shook her head. She could hear nothing but his thin thread of
voice.
"I am going with it, and this time I shan't come back. Good-bye,
Annette."
"Good-bye, Dick."
His eyes dwelt on hers, with a mute appeal in them. The forebreath of
the abyss was upon him, the shadow of "the outer dark."
She understood, and kissed him on the forehead with a great tenderness,
and leaned her cold cheek against his.
And as she stooped she heard the mighty wind of which he spoke. Its
rushing filled her ears, it filled the little chamber where those two poor
things had suffered together, and had in a way ministered to each other.
And the sick-room with its gilt mirror and its tawdry wall-paper, and
the evil picture never absent from Annette's brain, stooped and blended
into one, and wavered together as a flame wavers in a draught, and then

together vanished away.
"The wind is taking us both," Annette thought, as her eyes closed.

Chapter 6
"I was as children be Who have no care; I did not think or sigh, I did
not sicken;
But lo, Love beckoned me, And I was bare, And poor and starved and
dry, And fever-stricken." -- Thomas Hardy
It was five months later, the middle of February. Annette was lying in a
deck-chair by the tank in the shade of the orange trees. All was still,
with the afternoon stillness of Teneriffe, which will not wake up till
sunset. Even the black goats had ceased to bleat and ring their bells.
The hoopoe which had been saying Cuk--Cuk--Cuk all the morning in
the pepper tree was silent. The light air from the sea, bringing with it a
whiff as from a bride's bouquet, hardly stirred the leaves. The sunlight
trembled on the yellow stone steps, and on the trailing, climbing
bougainvillea which had flung its mantle of purple over the balustrade.
Through an opening in a network of almond blossom Annette could
look down across the white water-courses and green terraces to the
little town of Santa Cruz, lying glittering in the sunshine, with its
yellow and white and mauve walls and flat roofs and quaint cupolas,
outlined as if cut out in white paper, sharp white against the vivid blue
of the sea.
A grey lizard came slowly out of a clump of pink verbena near the tank,
and spread itself in a patch of sunlight on a little round stone. Annette,
as she lay motionless with thin folded hands, could see the pulse in its
throat rise and fall as it turned its jewelled eyes