I gained my tottering feet, for now
that all was over I felt as if I were made of running water, I saw the
men who held Ragnall loose their grip of him. He sprang to where his
wife was and stood before her as though confused, much as Jana had
stood, Jana against whose head he rested, his left hand holding to the
brute's gigantic tusk, for I think that he also was weak with toil,
terror, loss of blood and emotion.

"Luna," he gasped, "Luna!"

Leaning on the shoulder of a Kendah man, I drew nearer to see what
passed between them, for my curiosity overcame my faintness. For quite a
long while she stared at him, till suddenly her eyes began to change. It
was as though a soul were arising in their emptiness as the moon arises
in the quiet evening sky, giving them light and life. At length she
spoke in a slow, hesitating voice, the tones of which I remembered well
enough, saying:

"Oh! George, that dreadful brute," and she pointed to the dead elephant,
"has killed our baby. Look at it! Look at it! We must be everything to
each other now, dear, as we were before it came--unless God sends us
another."

Then she burst into a flood of weeping and fell into his arms, after
which I turned away. So, to their honour be it said, did the Kendah,
leaving the pair alone behind the bulk of dead Jana.

Here I may state two things: first, that Lady Ragnall, whose bodily
health had remained perfect throughout, entirely recovered her reason
from that moment. It was as though on the shattering of the Ivory Child
some spell had been lifted off her. What this spell may have been I am
quite unable to explain, but I presume that in a dim and unknown way she
connected this effigy with her own lost infant and that while she held
and tended it her intellect remained in abeyance. If so, she must also
have connected its destruction with the death of her own child which,
strangely enough, it will be remembered, was likewise killed by an
elephant. The first death that occurred in her presence took away her
reason, the second seeming death, which also occurred in her presence,
brought it back again!

Secondly, from the moment of the destruction of her boy in the streets
of the English country town to that of the shattering of the Ivory Child
in Central Africa her memory was an utter blank, with one exception.
This exception was a dream which a few days later she narrated to
Ragnall in my presence. That dream was that she had seen him and Savage
s