Tavernake hesitated for a moment under the portico of the Milan Court,
looking out at the rain which had suddenly commenced to descend. He
scarcely noticed that he had a companion until the man who was standing
by his side addressed him.
“Say, your name is Tavernake, isn't it?”
Tavernake, who had been on the point of striding away, turned sharply
around. The man who had spoken to him was wearing morning clothes of
dark gray tweed and a soft Homburg hat. His complexion was a little
sallow and he was clean-shaven except for a slight black moustache. He
was smoking a black cigar and his accent was transatlantic. Something
about his appearance struck Tavernake as being vaguely familiar, but he
could not at first recall where he had seen him before.
“That is my name, certainly,” Tavernake admitted.
“I am going to ask you a somewhat impertinent question,” his neighbor
remarked.
“I suppose you can ask it,” Tavernake rejoined. “I am not obliged to
answer, am I?”
The man smiled.
“Come,” he said, “that's honest, at any rate. Are you in a hurry for a
few minutes?”
“I am in no particular hurry,” Tavernake answered. “What do you want?”
“A few nights ago,” the stranger continued, lowering his voice a little,
“I met you with a young lady whose appearance, for some reason which
we needn't go into, interested me. To-night I happened to overhear you
inquiring, only a few minutes ago, for the sister of the same young
lady.”
“What you heard doesn't concern me in the least,” Tavernake retorted. “I
should say that you had no business to listen.”
His companion smiled.
“Well,” he declared, “I have always heard a good deal about British
frankness, and it seems to me that I'm getting some. Anyway, I'll
tell you where I come in. I am interested in Mrs. Wenham Gardner. I am
interested, also, in her sister, whom I think you know--Miss Beatrice
Franklin, not Miss Tavernake!”
Tavernake made no immediate reply. The man was an American, without a
doubt. Perhaps he knew something of Beatrice. Perhaps this was one
of the friends of that former life concerning which she had told him
nothing.
“You are not, by any chance, proposing,” Tavernake said at last, “to
discuss either of these ladies with me? I do not know you or what your
business may be. In any case, I am going now.”
The other laid his hand on Tavernake's shoulder.
“You'll be soaked to the skin,” he protested. “I want you to come into
the smoking-room here with me for a few minutes. We will have a drink
together and a little conversation, if you don't mind.”
“But I do mind,” Tavernake declared. “I don't know who you are and I
don't want to know you, and I am not going to talk about Mrs. Gardner,
or any other lady of my acquaintance, with strangers. Good-night!”
“One moment, please, Mr. Tavernake.”
Tavernake hesitated. There was something curiously compelling in the
other's smooth, distinct voice.
“I'd like you to take this card,” he said. “I told you my name before
but I expect you've forgotten it,--Pritchard--Sam Pritchard. Ever heard
of me before?”
“Never!”
“Not to have heard of me in the United States,” the other continued,
with a grim smile, “would be a tribute to your respectability. Most of
the crooks who find their way over here know of Sam Pritchard. I am a
detective and I come from New York.”
Tavernake turned and looked the man over. There was something convincing
about his tone and appearance. It did not occur to him to doubt for a
moment a word of this stranger's story.
“You haven't anything against her--against either of them?” he asked,
quickly.
“Nothing directly,” the detective answered. “All the same, you have been
calling upon Mrs. Wenham Gardner this evening, and if you are a friend
of hers I think that you had better come along with me and have that
talk.”
“I will come,” Tavernake agreed, “but I come as a listener. Remember
that I have nothing to tell you. So far as you are concerned, I do not
know either of those ladies.”
Pritchard smiled.
“Well,” he said, “I guess we'll let it go at that. All the same, if you
don't mind, we'll talk. Come this way and we'll get to the smoking-room
through the hotel. It's under cover.”
Tavernake moved restlessly in his chair.
“What the devil is all this talk about crooks!” he exclaimed
impatiently. “I didn't come here to listen to this sort of thing. I am
not sure that I believe a word of what you say.”
“Why should you,” Pritchard remarked, “without proof? Look here.”
He drew a leather case from his pocket and spread it out. There were a
dozen photographs there of men in prison attire. The detective pointed
to one, and with a little shiver Tavernake recognized the face of the
man who had been sitting at the right hand of Elizabeth.
“You don't mean to say,” he faltered, “that Mrs. Gardner--”
The detective folded up his case and replaced it in his pocket.
“No,” he said, “we haven't any photographs of your lady friend there,
nor of her sister. And yet, it may not be so far off.”
“If you are trying to fasten anything upon those ladies,--” Tavernake
began, threateningly.
The detective laughed and patted him on the shoulder.
“It isn't my business to try and fasten things upon any one,” he
interrupted. “At the same time, you seem to be a friend of Mrs. Wenham
Gardner, and it is just as well that some one should warn her.”
“Warn her of what?” Tavernake asked.
The detective looked at his cigar meditatively.
“Make her understand that there is trouble ahead,” he replied.
Tavernake sipped his whiskey and soda and lit a cigarette. Then he
turned in his chair and looked thoughtfully at his companion. Pritchard
was a striking-looking man, with hard, clean-cut features--a man of
determination.
“Mr. Pritchard, I am a clerk in an estate office. My people were
work-people and I am trying to better myself in the world. I haven't
learned how to beat about a subject, but I have learned a little of the
world, and I know that people such as you are not in the habit of doing
things without a reason. Why the devil have you brought me in here to
talk about Mrs. Gardner and her sister? If you've anything to say, why
don't you go to Mrs. Gardner herself and say it? Why do you come and
talk to strangers about their affairs? I am here listening to you, but I
tell you straight I don't like it.”
Pritchard nodded.
“Say, I am not sure that I don't like that sort of talk,” he declared.
“I know all about you, young man. You're in Dowling & Spence's office
and you've got to quit. You've got an estate you want financing.
Miss Beatrice Franklin was living under your roof--as your sister, I
understand--until yesterday, and Mrs. Gardner, for some reason of her
own, seems to be doing her best to add you to the list of her admirers.
I am not sure what it all means but I could make a pretty good guess.
Here's my point, though. You're right. I didn't bring you here for your
health. I brought you here because you can do me a service and yourself
one at the same time, and you'll be doing no one any harm, nobody you
care about, anyway. I have no grudge against Miss Beatrice. I'd just as
soon she kept out of the trouble that's coming.”
“What is this service?” Tavernake asked.
Pritchard for the moment evaded the point.
“I dare say you can understand, Mr. Tavernake,” he said, “that in my
profession one has to sometimes go a long way round to get a man or a
woman just where you want them. Now we merely glanced at that table as
we came in, and I can tell you this for gospel truth--there isn't one
of that crowd that I couldn't, if I liked, haul back to New York on some
charge or another. You wonder why I don't do it. I'll tell you. It's
because I am waiting--waiting until I can bring home something more
serious, something that will keep them out of the way for just as long
as possible. Do you follow me, Mr. Tavernake?”
“I suppose I do,” Tavernake answered, doubtfully. “You are only talking
of the men, of course?”
Pritchard smiled.
“My young friend,” he agreed, “I am only talking of the men. At the same
time, I guess I'm not betraying any confidence, or telling you anything
that Mrs. Wenham Gardner doesn't know herself, when I say that she's
doing her best to qualify for a similar position.”
“You mean that she is doing something against the law!” Tavernake
exclaimed, indignantly. “I don't believe it for a moment. If she is
associating with these people, it's because she doesn't know who they
are.”
Pritchard flicked the ash from his cigar.
“Well,” he said, “every man has a right to his own opinions, and for my
part I like to hear any one stick up for his friends. It makes no odds
to me. However, here are a few facts I am going to bring before you.
Four months ago, one of the turns at a vaudeville show down Broadway
consisted of a performance by a Professor Franklin and his two
daughters, Elizabeth and Beatrice. The professor hypnotized, told
fortunes, felt heads, and the usual rigmarole. Beatrice sang, Elizabeth
danced. People came to see the show, not because it was any good but
because the girls, even in New York, were beautiful.”
“A music-hall in New York!” Tavernake muttered.
The detective nodded.
“Among the young bloods of the city,” he continued, “were two brothers,
as much alike as twins, although they aren't twins, whose names were
Wenham and Jerry Gardner. There's nothing in fast life which those
young men haven't tried. Between them, I should say they represented
everything that was known of debauchery and dissipation. The eldest
can't be more than twenty-seven to-day, but if you were to see them
in the morning, either of them, before they had been massaged and
galvanized into life, you'd think they were little old men, with just
strength enough left to crawl about. Well, to cut a long story short,
both of them fell in love with Elizabeth.”
“Brutes!” Tavernake interjected.
“I guess they found Miss Elizabeth a pretty tough nut to crack,” the
detective went on. “Anyhow, you know what her price was from her name,
which is hers right enough. Wenham, who was a year younger than his
brother, was the first to bid it. Three months ago, Mr. and Mrs. Wenham
Gardner, Miss Beatrice, and the devoted father left New York in the
Lusitania and came to London.”
“Where is this Wenham Gardner, then?” Tavernake demanded.
Pritchard took his cigar case from his pocket and selected another
cigar.
“Say, that's where you strike the nail right on the head,” he remarked.
“Where is this Wenham Gardner?”
“I don't mind telling you, Mr. Tavernake, that to discover his
whereabouts is exactly what I am over on this side for. I have a
commission from the family to find out, and a blank cheque to do it
with.”
“Do you mean that he has disappeared, then?” asked Tavernake.
“Off the face of the earth, sir,” Pritchard replied. “Something like two
months ago, the young married couple, with Miss Beatrice, started for
a holiday tour somewhere down in the west of England. A few days after
they started, Miss Beatrice comes back to London alone. She goes to
a boarding-house, is practically penniless, but she has shaken her
sister--has, I believe, never spoken with her since. A little later,
Elizabeth alone turns up in London. She has plenty of money, more
money than she has ever had the control of before in her life, but no
husband.”
“So far, I don't see anything remarkable about that,” Tavernake
interposed.
“That may or may not be,” Pritchard answered, drily. “This creature,
Wenham Gardner--I hate to call him a man--was her abject slave--up till
the time they reached London, at any rate. He would never have quit of
his own accord. He stopped quite suddenly communicating with all his
friends. None of their cables, even, were answered.”
“Why don't you go and ask Mrs. Gardner where he is?” Tavernake demanded
bluntly.
“I have already,” Pritchard declared, “taken that liberty. With tears
in her eyes, she assured me that after some slight quarrel, in which
she admits that she was the one to blame, her husband walked out of the
house where they were staying, and she has not seen him since. She was
quite ready with all the particulars, and even implored me to help find
him.”
“I cannot imagine,” Tavernake said, “why any one should disbelieve her.”
The detective smiled.
“There are a few little outside circumstances,” he remarked, looking at
the ash of his cigar. “In the first place, how do you suppose that this
young Wenham Gardner spent the last week of his stay in New York?”
“How should I know?” Tavernake replied, impatiently.
“By realizing every cent of his property on which he could lay his
hands,” the detective continued. “It isn't at any time an easy business,
and the Gardner interest is spread out in many directions, but he must
have sailed with something like forty thousand pounds in hard cash.
A suspicious person might presume that that forty thousand pounds has
found its way to the stronger of the combination.”
“Anything else?” Tavernake asked.
“I won't worry you much more,” the detective answered. “There are a few
other circumstances which seem to need explanation, but they can wait.
There is one serious one, however, and that is where you come in.”
“Indeed!” Tavernake remarked. “I was hoping you would come to that
soon.”
“The two sisters, Beatrice and Elizabeth, have been together ever
since we can learn anything of their history. Those people who don't
understand the disappearance of Wenham Gardner would like to know why
they quarreled and parted, why Beatrice is keeping away from her sister
in this strange manner. I personally, too, should like to know from Miss
Beatrice when she last saw Wenham Gardner alive.”
“You want me to ask Miss Beatrice these things?” Tavernake demanded.
“It might come better from you,” Pritchard admitted. “I have written her
to the theatre but naturally she has not replied.”
Tavernake looked curiously at his companion.
“Do you really suppose,” he asked, “that, even granted there were any
unusual circumstances in connection with that quarrel--do you seriously
suppose that Beatrice would give her sister away?”
The detective sighed.
“No doubt, Mr. Tavernake,” he said, “these young ladies are friends of
yours, and perhaps for that reason you are a little prejudiced in their
favor. Their whole bringing-up and associations, however, have certainly
not been of a strict order. I cannot help thinking that persuasion might
be brought to bear upon Miss Beatrice, that it might be pointed out to
her that a true story is the safest.”
“Well, if you've finished,” Tavernake declared, “I'd like to tell you
what I think of your story. I think it's all d--d silly nonsense! This
Wenham Gardner, by your own saying, was half mad. There was a quarrel
and he's gone off to Paris or somewhere. As to your suggestions about
Mrs. Gardner, I think they're infamous.”
Pritchard was unmoved by his companion's warmth.
“Why, that's all right, Mr. Tavernake,” he affirmed. “I can quite
understand your feeling like that just at first. You see, I've been
among crime and criminals all my days, and I learn to look for a certain
set of motives when a thing of this sort happens. You've been brought
up among honest folk, who go the straightforward way about life, and
naturally you look at the same matter from a different point of view.
But you and I have got to talk this out. I want you to understand that
those very charming young ladies are not quite the class of young women
whom you know anything about. Mind you, I haven't a word to say against
Miss Beatrice. I dare say she's as straight as they make 'em. But--you
must take another whiskey and soda, Mr. Tavernake. Now, I insist upon
it. Tim, come right over here.”
Mr. Pritchard seemed to have forgotten what he was talking about. The
room had been suddenly invaded. The whole of the little supper party,
whose individual members he had pointed out to his companion, came
trooping into the room. They were all apparently on the best of terms
with themselves, and they all seemed to make a point of absolutely
ignoring Pritchard's presence. Elizabeth was the one exception. She was
carrying a tiny Chinese spaniel under one arm; with the fingers of her
other hand she held a tortoise-shell mounted monocle to her eye, and
stared directly at the two men. Presently she came languidly across the
room to them.
“Dear me,” she said, “I had no idea that even your wide circle of
acquaintances, Mr. Pritchard, included my friend, Mr. Tavernake.”
The two men rose to their feet. Tavernake felt confused and angry. It
was as though he had been playing the traitor in listening, even for a
moment, to these stories.
“Mr. Pritchard introduced himself to me only a few minutes ago,” he
declared. “He brought me in here and I have been listening to a lot of
rubbish from him of which I don't believe a single word.”
She flashed a wonderful smile upon him.
“Mr. Pritchard is so very censorious,” she murmured. “He takes such a
very low view of human nature. After all, though, I suppose we must not
blame him. I think that as men and women we do not exist to him. We are
simply the pegs by means of which he can climb a little higher in the
esteem of his employers.”
Pritchard took up his soft hat and stick.
“Mrs. Gardner,” he said, “I will confess that I have been wasting my
time with this young man. You are a trifle severe upon me. You may find,
and before long, that I am your best friend.”
She laughed delightfully.
“Dear Mr. Pritchard,” she exclaimed, “it is a strange thought, that! If
only I dared hope that some day it might come true!”
“More unlikely things, madam, are happening every hour,” the detective
remarked. “The world--our little corner of it, at any rate--is full
of anomalies. There might even come a time to any one of us three when
liberty was more dangerous than the prison cell itself.”
He nodded carelessly to Tavernake, and with a bow to Elizabeth turned
and left the room. Elizabeth remained as though turned to stone, looking
after him as he descended the stairs.
“The man is a fool!” Tavernake cried, roughly.
Elizabeth shook her head and sighed.
“He is something far more ineffective,” she said. “He is just a little
too clever.”
CHAPTER, XV. GENERAL DISCONTENT
Elizabeth did not at once rejoin her friends. Instead, she sank on to
the low settee close to where she had been standing, and drew Tavernake
down to her side. She waved her hand across at the others, who were
calling for her.
“In a moment, dear people,” she said.
Then she leaned back among the cushions and laughed at her companion.
“Tell me, Mr. Tavernake,” she asked, “don't you feel that you have
stepped into a sort of modern Arabian Nights?”
“Why?”
“Oh, I know Mr. Pritchard's weakness,” she continued. “He loves to throw
a glamour around everything he says or does. Because he honors me by
interesting himself in my concerns, he has probably told you all sorts
of wonderful things about me and my friends. A very ingenious romancer,
Mr. Pritchard, you know. Confess, now, didn't he tell you some stories
about us?”
She might have spared herself the trouble of beating about the bush.
There was no hesitation about Tavernake.
“He said that your friends were every one of them criminals,” Tavernake
declared, “and he admitted that he was working hard at the present
moment to discover that you were one, too.”
She laughed softly but heartily.
“I wonder what was his object,” she remarked, “in taking you into his
confidence.”
“He happened to know,” Tavernake explained, “that I was intimate with
your sister. He wanted me to ask Beatrice a certain question.”
Elizabeth laughed no more. She looked steadfastly into his eyes.
“And that question?”
“He wanted me to ask Beatrice why she left you and hid herself in
London.”
She tried to smile but not very successfully.
“According to his story,” Tavernake continued, “you and Beatrice and
your husband were away together somewhere in the country. Something
happened there, something which resulted in the disappearance of your
husband. Beatrice came back alone and has not been near you since. Soon
afterwards, you, too, came back alone. Mr. Gardner has not been seen or
heard of.”
Elizabeth was bending over her dog, but even Tavernake, unobservant
though he was, could see that she was shaken.
“Pritchard is a clever man, generally,” she remarked, “diabolically
clever. Why has he told you all this, I wonder? He must have known that
you would probably repeat it to me. Why does he want to show me his
hand?”
“I have no idea,” Tavernake replied. “These matters are all beyond
me. They do not concern me in any way. I am not keeping you from your
friends? Please send me away when you like.”
“Don't go just yet,” she begged. “Sit with me for a moment. Can't you
see,” she added, whispering, “that I have had a shock? Sit with me. I
can't go back to those others just yet.”
Tavernake did as he was bidden. The woman at his side was still
caressing the little animal she carried. Watching her, however,
Tavernake could see that her bosom was rising and falling quickly. There
was an unnatural pallor in her cheeks, a terrified gleam in her eyes.
Nevertheless, these things passed. In a very few seconds she was herself
again.
“Come,” she said, “it is not often that I give way. The only time I am
ever afraid is when there is something which I do not understand. I do
not understand Mr. Pritchard to-night. I know that he is my enemy. I
cannot imagine why he should talk to you. He must have known that you
would repeat all he said. It is not like him. Tell me, Mr. Tavernake,
you have heard all sorts of things about me. Do you believe them? Do
you believe--it's rather a horrible thing to ask, isn't it?” she went on
hurriedly,--“do you believe that I made away with my husband?”
“You surely do not need to ask me that question,” Tavernake answered,
fervently. “I should believe your word, whatever you told me. I should
not believe that you could do anything wrong.”
Her hand touched his for a moment and he was repaid.
“Don't think too well of me,” she begged. “I don't want to disappoint
you.”
Some one pushed open the swing doors and she started nervously. It was
only a waiter who passed through into the bar.
“What I think of you,” Tavernake said slowly, “nothing could alter, but
because I am stupid, I suppose, there is quite a good deal that I cannot
understand. I cannot understand, for instance, why they should suspect
you of having anything to do with your husband's disappearance. You can
prove where you were when he left you?”
“Quite easily,” she answered, “only, unfortunately, no one seems to
have seen him go. He timed his departure so cunningly that he apparently
vanished into thin air. Even then,” she continued, “but for one thing
I don't suppose that any one would have had suspicions. I dare say Mr.
Pritchard told you that before we left New York my husband sold out some
of his property and brought it over to Europe with him in cash. We had
both determined that we would live abroad and have nothing more to do
with America. It was not I who persuaded him to do this. It made no
difference to me. If he had run away and left me, the courts would have
given me money. If he had died and I had been a widow, he would have
left me his property. But simply because there was all this money in
our hands, and because he disappeared, his people and this man Pritchard
suspect me.”
“It is wicked,” he muttered.
She turned slowly towards him.
“Mr. Tavernake,” she said, “do you know that you can help me very much
indeed?”
“I only wish I could,” he replied. “Try me.”
“Can't you see,” she went on, “that the great thing against me is that
Beatrice left me suddenly when we were on that wretched expedition, and
came back alone? She is in London, I know, quite close to me, and still
she hides. Pritchard asks himself why. Mr. Tavernake, go and tell her
what people are saying, go and tell her everything that has happened,
let her understand that her keeping away is doing me a terrible injury,
beg her to come and let people see that we are reconciled, and warn her,
too, against Pritchard. Will you do this for me?”
“Of course I will,” Tavernake answered. “I will see her to-morrow.”
Elizabeth drew a little sigh of relief.
“And you'll let me know what she says?” she asked, rising.
“I shall be only too glad to,” Tavernake assured her.
“Good-night!”
She looked up into his face with a smile which had turned the heads of
hardened stagers in New York. No wonder that Tavernake felt his heart
beat against his ribs! He took her hands and held them for a moment.
Then he turned abruptly away.
“Good-night!” he said.
He disappeared through the swing doors. She strolled across the room to
where her friends were sitting in a circle, laughing and talking. Her
father, who had just come in and joined them, gripped her by the arm as
she sat down.
“What does it mean?” he demanded, with shaking voice. “Did you see
that he was there with Pritchard--your young man--that wretched estate
agent's clerk? I tell you that Pritchard was pumping him for all he was
worth.”
“My dear father,” she whispered, coldly, “don't be melodramatic. You
give yourself away the whole time. Go to bed if you can't behave like a
man.”
The lights had been turned low, there was no one else in the room. The
little old gentleman with the eyeglass leaned forward.
“Have you any notion, my dear Elizabeth,” he asked, “why our friend
Pritchard is so much in evidence just at present?”
“Not on account of you, Jimmy,” she answered, “nor of any one else here,
in fact. The truth is he has conceived a violent admiration for me--an
admiration so pronounced, indeed, that he hates to let me out of his
sight.”
They all laughed uproariously. Then Walter Crease, the journalist,
leaned forward,--a man with a long, narrow face, yellow-stained fingers,
and hollow cheekbones. He glanced around the room before he spoke, and
his voice sounded like a hoarse whisper.
“See here,” he said, “seems to me Pritchard is getting mighty awkward.
He hasn't got his posse around him in this country, anyway.”
There was a dead silence for several seconds. Then the little old
gentleman nodded solemnly.
“I am a trifle tired of Pritchard myself,” he admitted, “and he
certainly knows too much. He carries too much in his head to go around
safely.”
The eyes of Elizabeth were bright.
“He treats us like children,” she declared. “To-night he has told the
whole of my affairs to a perfect stranger. It is intolerable!”
The little party broke up soon after. Only Walter Crease and the
man called Jimmy Post were left talking, and they retired into the
window-seat, whispering together.
Tavernake, with his hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, left the
hotel and strode along the Strand. Some fancy seized him before he had
gone many paces, and turning abruptly to the left he descended to the
Embankment. He made his way to the very seat upon which he had sat once
before with Beatrice. With folded arms he leaned back in the corner,
looking out across the river, at the curving line of lights, at the
black, turgid waters, the slowly-moving hulk of a barge on its way down
the stream. It was a new thing, this, for him to have to accuse himself
of folly, of weakness. For the last few days he had moved in a mist of
uncertainty, setting his heel upon all reflection, avoiding every issue.
To-night he could escape those accusing thoughts no longer; to-night he
was more than ever bitter with himself. What folly was this which had
sprung up in his life--folly colossal, unimaginable, as unexpected as
though it had fallen a thunderbolt from the skies! What had happened to
change him so completely!
His thought traveled back to the boarding-house. It was there that the
thing had begun. Before that night upon the roof, the finger-posts which
he had set up with such care and deliberation along the road which led
towards his coveted goal, had seemed to him to point with unfaltering
directness towards everything in life worthy of consideration. To-night
they were only dreary phantasms, marking time across a miserable plain.
Perhaps, after all, there had been something in his nature, some rebel
thing, intolerable yet to be reckoned with, which had been first born of
that fateful curiosity of his. It had leapt up so suddenly, sprung with
such scanty notice into strenuous and insistent life. Yet what place had
it there? He must fight against it, root it out with both hands. What
was this world of intrigue, this criminal, undesirable world, to him?
His common sense forbade him altogether to dissociate Elizabeth from her
friends, from her surroundings. She was the secret of the pain which was
tearing at his heartstrings, of all the excitement, the joy, the passion
which had swept like a full flood across the level way of his life,
which had set him drifting among the unknown seas. Yet it was Beatrice
who had brought this upon him. If she had never left, if he had not
tasted the horrors of this new loneliness, he might have been able to
struggle on. He missed her, missed her diabolically. The other things,
marvelous though they were, had been more or less like a mirage.
This world of new emotions had spread like a silken mesh over all his
thoughts, over all his desires. Beatrice had been a tangible person,
restful, delightful, a real companion, his one resource against this
madness. And now she was gone, and he was powerless to get her back.
He turned his head, he looked up the road along which he had torn that
night with his arms around her. She owed him her life and she had gone!
With all a man's inconsequence, it seemed to him as he rose heavily to
his feet and started homeward, that she had repaid him with a certain
amount of ingratitude, that she had left him at the one moment in his
life when he needed her most.