Part 70 (1/2)

Underneath the heavy fur coat, the man's body was absolutely rippling up and down--it was horrible.

The eyelids fell again. The voice became sleepy, childish almost.

... ”But _I_ have come to marry Rita!”

Wog became indignant. ”Mr. Lothian,” she said, ”you ought not to speak like that before me. How could you have married Rita. You _are_ married. Please don't even hint at such things.”

”How stupid you are, Wog,” he said, as if he had known her for years; in much the same sort of voice that Rita would have said it. ”My wife's dead, dead and buried... . I thought you would both have known... .”

His trembling hands were opening the letter which Rita Wallace had left for him.

He drew the page out of the envelope and then he looked up at Ethel Harrison again. There was a dreadful yearning in his voice now.

”Yes, yes, but _whom_ has my little Rita married?”

Real fear fell upon Ethel now. She became aware that this man had not realised what had happened in any way. But the whole thing was too painful. It must be got over at once.

”Mr. Ingworth d.i.c.kson, of course,” she answered, with some sharpness in her tones.

For a minute Lothian looked at her as if she were the horizon. Then he nodded. ”Oh, d.i.c.ker,” he said in a perfectly uninterested voice--”Yes, d.i.c.ker--just her man, of course... .”

He was reading the letter now.

This was Rita's farewell letter.

”_Gilbert dear_:

”I shall always read your books and poems, and I shall always think of you. We have been tremendous friends, and though we shall never meet again, we shall always think of each other, shan't we? I am going to marry d.i.c.ker to-morrow morning, and by the time you see this--Wog will send it--I shall be married. Of course we mustn't meet or write to each other any more. You are married and I'm going to be to-morrow. But do think of your little friend sometimes, Gilbert. She will often think of you and read _all_ you write.”

Lothian folded up the letter and replaced it in its envelope with great precision. Then he thrust it in the inner breast pocket of his coat.

Wog watched him, in deadly fear.

She knew now that elemental forces had been at work, that her lovely Rita had evoked soul-shaking, sundering strengths... .

But Gilbert Lothian came towards her with both hands outstretched.

”Oh, I thank you, I thank you a thousand times,” he said, ”for all your goodness to Rita--How happy you must have been together--you two girls----”

He had taken both her hands in his. Now he dropped them suddenly.

Something, something quite beautiful, which had been upon his face, snapped away.

The kindness and welcome in his eyes changed to a horror-struck stare.

He began to murmur and burble at the back of his throat.

His arms shot stiffly this way and that, like the arms of railway signals.

He ran to one wall and slapped a flat palm upon it.