The near escape and this new quick pain made again every faculty
alive and intense. He knew that what he followed was most surely
Death animate: wounded and helpless, he was utterly at her mercy
if so she should realise and take action. Hopeless to avenge,
hopeless to save, his very despair for Sweyn swept him on to
follow, and follow, and precede the kiss-doomed to death. Could he
yet fail to hunt that Thing past midnight, out of the womanly form
alluring and treacherous, into lasting restraint of the bestial,
which was the last shred of hope left from the confident purpose
of the outset?
"Sweyn, Sweyn, O Sweyn!" He thought he was praying, though his
heart wrung out nothing but this: "Sweyn, Sweyn, O Sweyn!"
The last hour from midnight had lost half its quarters, and the
stars went lifting up the great minutes; and again his greatening
heart, and his shrinking brain, and the sickening agony that swung
at either side, conspired to appal the will that had only seeming
empire over his feet.
Now White Fell's body was so closely enveloped that not a lap nor
an edge flew free. She stretched forward strangely aslant, leaning
from the upright poise of a runner. She cleared the ground at
times by long bounds, gaining an increase of speed that Christian
agonised to equal.
Because the stars pointed that the end was nearing, the black
brood came behind again, and followed, noising.
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