He was not thinking of her as St.
Pierre's wife. And then sharply he caught himself and placed the
handkerchief back on the piano keys. He tried to laugh at himself,
but there was an emptiness where a moment before there had been
that thrill of which he was now ashamed.
He turned back to the window. The thunder had come nearer. It was
coming up fast out of the west, and with it a darkness that was
like the blackness of a pit. A dead stillness was preceding it
now, and in that stillness it seemed to Carrigan that he could
hear the soapy, slitting sound of the streaming flashes of
electrical fire that blazoned the advance of the storm. The camp-
fires across the river were dying down. One of them went out as he
looked at it, and he stared into the darkness as if trying to
pierce distance and gloom to see what sort of a shelter it was
that St. Pierre's wife had over there. And there came over him in
these moments a desire that was almost cowardly. It was the desire
to escape, to leave behind him the memory of the rock and of St.
Pierre's wife, and to pursue once more his own great adventure,
the quest of Black Roger Audemard.
He heard the rain coming.
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