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That picture mustn't come true! The key attached to the watch-chain, she had removed from the safe door, and had laid watch and all on a buffet. Beside them she had placed the door key. Now, as the chambermaid chattered in the corridor, and O'Reilly made light of his loss, Clodagh moved faster than any figure in a moving picture.
I suppose it must have been about noon. I sat staring a minute, and my first numb thought was somehow this: that the Countess Clodagh had prayed me 'Be first' for her. Wondrous little now cared I for the Countess Clodagh in her far unreal world of warmth precious little for the fortune which she coveted: millions on millions of fortunes lay unregarded around me.
"For heaven's sake, do." They had reached the gray limousine. Justin opened the door. "Clo, here is my old friend, John Heron, come to see you," he announced. "Clo! Her name's not 'Clodagh, is it?" the question leapt from Heron's lips. "It was one of my mother's names, Mr. Heron." "And your voice is her voice!" he exclaimed. "Your face is her face."
We were silent, she and I; I standing, looking at her, she drawing the thumb across the leaf-edges, and beginning again, contemplatively. Then she laughed dryly a little a dry, mad laugh. 'Why did you start when I said that? she asked, reading now at random. 'I! I did not start, Clodagh! What made you think that I started? I did not start! Who told you, Clodagh, that Peters takes atropine?
And a third thing I remember in all that turmoil of doubt and flurry: that as the ship moved down with the afternoon tide a telegram was put into my hand; it was a last word from Clodagh; and she said only this: 'Be first for Me. The Boreal left St. Katherine's Docks in beautiful weather on the afternoon of the 19th June, full of good hope, bound for the Pole.
I meditated upon her a long time that morning from the opposite pavement. An oval locket at her throat contained, I knew, my likeness: for eight years previously I had given it her. It was Clodagh, the poisoner. I thought that I would go into that house, and walk through it from top to bottom, and sit in it, and spit in it, and stamp in it, in spite of any one: for the sun was now high.
With lightning swiftness I remembered an under-look of mistrust which I had once seen on his face. Oh, well, I would not, and could not! she was my love I stood like marble... Clodagh went to meet Wilson with frank right hand, in the left being the fragile glass containing the injection. My eyes were fastened on her face: it was full of reassurance, of free innocence.
It was then that I said to Clodagh: 'Clodagh, your presence at the bed-side here somehow does not please me. It is so unnecessary. 'Unnecessary certainly, she replied: 'but I always had a genius for nursing, and a passion for watching the battles of the body. Since no one objects, why should you? 'Ah!... I don't know. This is a case that I dislike. I have half a mind to throw it to the devil.
But I could no more help it than I could fly. Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite a minute she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, steadily bent and smelling. She said presently in her cold, rapid way: 'The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be ennobled.
'Clodagh, I said after some minutes 'do you know why I called you Clodagh? 'No? Tell me? 'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called Clodagh: and she was a.... 'But tell me first, cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one's wife, flom all the others? 'Well, by their faces.... 'But there must have been many faces all alike 'Not all alike.
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