Part 6 (1/2)

”Please listen: I came to this place to make a quick end to my troubles--but I've changed my mind about that, now. What's happened in this room has made me see that n.o.body has any right to--hasten things.

But I mean to leave the country--immediately--and let death find me where it will. I shall leave behind me a name and a little money, neither of any conceivable use to me. Will you take them, employ them to make your life what it was meant to be? It's a little thing, but it will make me feel a lot more fit to go out of this world--to know I've left at least one decent act to mark my memory. There's only this far-fetched chance--I _may_ live. It's a million-to-one shot, but you've got to bear it in mind. But really you can't lose--”

”Oh, stop, stop!” she implored him, half hysterical. ”To think of marrying to benefit by the death of a man like you--!”

”You've no right to look at it that way.” He had a wry, secret smile for his specious sophistry. ”You're being asked to confer, not to accept, a favour. It's just an act of kindness to a hopeless man. I'd go mad if I didn't know you were safe from a recurrence of the folly of this afternoon.”

”Don't!” she cried--”don't tempt me. You've no right.... You don't know how frantic I am....”

”I do,” he countered frankly. ”I'm depending on just that to swing you to my point of view. You've got to come to it. I mean you shall marry me.”

She stared up at him, spell-bound, insensibly yielding to the domination of his will. It was inevitable. He was scarcely less desperate than she--and no less overwrought and unstrung; and he was the stronger; in the natural course of things his will could not but prevail. She was little more than a child, accustomed to yield and go where others led or pointed out the path. What resistance could she offer to the domineering importunity of a man of full stature, arrogant in his strength and--hounded by devils? And he in the fatuity of his soul believed that he was right, that he was fighting for the girl's best interests, fighting--and not ungenerously--to save her from the ravening consequences of her indiscretion!

The bald truth is, he was hardly a responsible agent: distracted by the ravings of an ego mutinous in the shadow of annihilation, as well as by contemplation of the girl's wretched plight, he saw all things in distorted perspective. He had his being in a nightmare world of frightful, insane realities. He could have conceived of nothing too terrible and preposterous to seem reasonable and right....

The last trace of evening light had faded out of the world before they were agreed. Darkness wrapped them in its folds; they were but as voices warring in a black and boundless void.

Whitaker struck a match and applied it to the solitary gas-jet. A thin, blue, sputtering tongue of flame revealed them to one another. The girl still crouched in her arm-chair, weary and spent, her powers of contention all vitiated by the losing struggle. Whitaker was trembling with nervous fatigue.

”Well?” he demanded.

”Oh, have your own way,” she said drearily. ”If it must be....”

”It's for the best,” he insisted obstinately. ”You'll never regret it.”

”One of us will--either you or I,” she said quietly. ”It's too one-sided. You want to give all and ask nothing in return. It's a fool's bargain.”

He hesitated, stammering with surprise. She had a habit of saying the unexpected. ”A fool's bargain”--the wisdom of the sage from the lips of a child....

”Then it's settled,” he said, business-like, offering his hand. ”Fool's bargain or not--it's a bargain.”

She rose una.s.sisted, then trusted her slender fingers to his palm. She said nothing. The steady gaze of her extraordinary eyes abashed him.

”Come along and let's get it over,” he muttered clumsily. ”It's late, and there's a train to New York at half-past ten, you might as well catch.”

She withdrew her hand, but continued to regard him steadfastly with her enigmatic, strange stare. ”So,” she said coolly, ”that's settled too, I presume.”

”I'm afraid you couldn't catch an earlier one,” he evaded. ”Have you any baggage?”

”Only my suit-case. It won't take a minute to pack that.”

”No hurry,” he mumbled....

They left the hotel together. Whitaker got his change of a hundred dollars at the desk--”Mrs. Morten's” bill, of course, included with his--and bribed the bell-boy to take the suit-case to the railway station and leave it there, together with his own hand-bag. Since he had unaccountably conceived a determination to continue living for a time, he meant to seek out more pleasant accommodations for the night.

The rain had ceased, leaving a ragged sky of clouds and stars in patches. The air was warm and heavy with wetness. Sidewalks glistened like black watered silk; street lights mirrored themselves in fugitive puddles in the roadways; limbs of trees overhanging the sidewalks s.h.i.+vered now and again in a half-hearted breeze, pelting the wayfarers with miniature showers of lukewarm, scented drops.

Turning away from the centre of the town, they traversed slowly long streets of residences set well back behind decent lawns. Warm lamplight mocked them from a hundred homely windows. They pa.s.sed few people--a pair of lovers; three bareheaded giggling girls in short, light frocks strolling with their arms round one another; a scattering of men hurrying home to belated suppers.

The girl lagged with weariness. Awakening to this fact, Whitaker slackened his impatient stride and quietly slipped her arm through his.

”Is it much farther?” she asked.