"No, except "--He halted. "Except if we come to a pinch,
and need a man for some tight place, then give me first chance. Won't
you? I could do better, now, than--than you younger men. Oh, and Hackh;
your efforts to-night--Well, few men would have dared, and I feel
immensely grateful."
He disappeared among the orange trees, leaving Rudolph to think about
such gratitude.
"Now, then," called Heywood, and stooped to the white bundle at their
feet. "Don't stand looking. Can't be helped. Trust old Gilly to take it
like a man. Come bear a hand."
And between them the two friends carried to the nunnery a tiresome
theorist, who had acted once, and now, himself tired and limp, would
offend no more by speaking.
When the dawn filled the compound with a deep blue twilight, and this in
turn grew pale, the night-long menace of noise gradually faded also,
like an orgy of evil spirits dispersing before cockcrow. To ears long
deafened, the wide stillness had the effect of another sound, never
heard before. Even when disturbed by the flutter of birds darting from
top to dense green top of the orange trees, the air seemed hushed by
some unholy constraint.
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