Part 14 (1/2)

”I'm not much hurt,” he said half dazedly. ”It--it was an accident. He didn't mean it. I was looking at him. The gun went off. He didn't shoot at me.... _Hugh_!”

The man was staring straight ahead of him, and now he drew his hand across his eyes, the fingers crooked as though they tore a veil.

”Now,” he said, ”I do see myself just as I am. Yes, I did shoot at you.

Yes, I think I meant to kill you. I must have meant to kill you. That's the truth. For the second time I'm a murderer. Yet now, as G.o.d lives, even if I am down in the dust, I'll lay hold of my stars. I'm going to walk out of your lives so that they can shape themselves to their own good ends. Sylvie can shape yours with you, Pete.” He hesitated a moment. ”If a coward, a murderer, can say 'G.o.d bless you,' take that blessing!”

He picked up his gun and shuffled across the floor, flinching aside from Bella as though he could bear no further touch or word, and went out of the door, letting in the brightness of the sunrise.

Pete had sunk into a chair, faint from the shock and weakness of his wound; and Sylvie bent over him. For a minute, in great and bitter loneliness Bella stood and watched them; then she followed Hugh.

He had put down his gun and gone slowly up from the hollow and was walking along the river-bank. He had the look of a man who strolls in meditation. When he came to his boat where it lay near the roots of the three big pines, he turned it over--he had been mending its bottom the morning of yesterday--and began to push it down toward the plunging stream. The glitter of morning took all the swirlings and ripplings and plungings of the swift water in its golden hands. Hugh steadied the boat. Above him on the bank Bella spoke quietly.

”Hugh,” she said, ”look up at me. What are you going to do?”

He lifted his face, still holding to the boat.

”What are you going to do?” she repeated.

”Why do you want to know? You've heard the truth.”

She came down the bank and stood beside him so close that her hair, loosened by the wind, was blown against his shoulder. She pressed it back and gazed into his eyes. The inner glow had worn through at last.

She was all warmth, all flame now. She smiled with soft and parted lips.

”Do you think that was the truth of you, my dear,” she said, ”_my_ truth of you? I have always seen you as you are. But”--she drew a big breath, like a climber who has reached the height--”but--I came to you, didn't I?”

Hugh's eyes widened, the pupils swallowing her light. ”You--you came to me? Not for Pete's sake?”

”Never for his sake.”