She looked at him, and she thought of his passing away from her forever more.

She wondered what her life would be when he should have passed out of it.

A blank?
Oh, worse than a blank, for she would have ever present with her the recollection of how he had once stood before her as he was standing now--tall, with his brown hands clenched, and a paleness underlying the tan of his face.

"The bravest man alive"-- that was what Phyllis had called him, and Phyllis had been right.

He was a man who had fought his way single-handed through such perils as made those who merely read about them throb with anxiety.
This was the man of whom she knew that she would ever retain a memory--this was the man whom she was ready to send back to the uttermost ends of the earth.
And this was to be the reward of his devotion to her! What was she that she could do this thing?
What was she that she should refrain from sacrificing herself for him?
She had known women who had sacrificed themselves to men--such men! Wretched things! Not like that man of men who stood before her with such a look on his face as it had worn, she knew, in the most desperate moments of his life, when the next moment might bring death to him--death from an arrow--from a wild beast--from a hurricane.
What could she do?
She did nothing.
She made no effort to save herself.
If he had put his arms about her and had carried her away from her husband's house to the uttermost ends of the earth, she would not have resisted.