Part 34 (1/2)

”Oh, you did, did you?” he said.

Her a.s.surance was very pleasing to him. The faith that her words implied gave him an odd little feeling of comfort and happiness.

”I can easily get you out of this,” he added; ”give me your address and when the gentleman comes--”

”That is impossible,” she replied hurriedly. ”Please don't think I'm ungrateful, and don't think I'm being silly--you do think I'm being silly, don't you!”

”I have never harboured such an unworthy thought,” he said virtuously.

”Yes, you have,” she persisted, ”but really I can't tell you where I am living. I have a very special reason for not doing so. It's not myself that I'm thinking about, but there's a life involved.”

This was a somewhat dramatic statement to make and she felt she had gone too far.

”Perhaps I don't mean that,” she said, ”but there is some one I care for--” she dropped her voice.

”Oh,” said T. X. blankly.

He came down from his rosy heights into the shadow and darkness of a sunless valley.

”Some one you care for,” he repeated after a while.

”Yes.”

There was another long silence, then,

”Oh, indeed,” said T. X.

Again the unbroken interval of quiet and after a while she said in a low voice, ”Not that way.”

”Not what way!” asked T. X. huskily, his spirits doing a little mountaineering.

”The way you mean,” she said.

”Oh,” said T. X.

He was back again amidst the rosy snows of dawn, was in fact climbing a dizzy escalier on the topmost height of hope's Mont Blanc when she pulled the ladder from under him.

”I shall, of course, never marry,” she said with a certain prim decision.

T. X. fell with a dull sickening thud, discovering that his rosy snows were not unlike cold, hard ice in their lack of resilience.

”Who said you would?” he asked somewhat feebly, but in self defence.

”You did,” she said, and her audacity took his breath away.

”Well, how am I to help you!” he asked after a while.

”By giving me some advice,” she said; ”do you think I ought to put the money there!”

”Indeed I do not,” said T. X., recovering some of his natural dominance; ”apart from the fact that you would be compounding a felony, you would merely be laying out trouble for yourself in the future. If he can get 20 pounds so easily, he will come for 40 pounds. But why do you stay away, why don't you return home? There's no charge and no breath of suspicion against you.”