"But very truly, my dear."
"Yesterday your dear, today less than the dust--!"
"You are mistaken. I owe you too much--"
"You will never repay it now. Did I not foretell that, when I had told
you everything, you would forget your pledge to me? 'Prove me
ungrateful'--out of your own mouth, Michael!--'and you can ask nothing
of me I will refuse to do in testimony to my penitence.'"
Still unresisting in her embrace, he asked: "And I am already proved
ungrateful in your sight?"
"Do you not mean to forsake me, put me by now I am of no more use?"
"I have not said so."
"What else do you intend, when you tell me of your determination to go
back to New York?"
"One must first pay one's debts--"
"Then the debt you owe my love and devotion stands second to the debt
you owe self-love?"
"Say, rather, self-respect; wanting that, no man can claim to deserve
any woman's love. Let me first of all settle my reckoning with
Society--"
"There will be nothing of you left for me!"
"In one breath you urge me to hold myself blameless for wrongs done to
others that I don't remember, in the next you call me to account for
obligations to you incurred under the same conditions."
"I am not concerned with consistency, Michael, but with love. You have
made yourself too dear to me, even though you didn't know what you were
doing--I can't go on without you now. You hold your dream of honesty
dear; do not deny me my dream of decency. Back there in New York we
joined our lives, outlaw and outcast; we must go on together or forego
all hope for all time. Give me at least the fair chance you ask for
yourself . . ."
Her prayers ran out in a mumble under a hand which gently closed her
mouth; ears not deaf to them had been quick none the less to pick up
footfalls in the passageway. Now in the hush that fell the knob of the
stateroom door rattled, the door itself creaked to the pressure of a
shoulder, someone swore indignantly beyond it, and immediately a knock
weighted with authority resounded on its panels.
In the panting bosom pressed to his Lanyard felt the heart leap and
flutter wildly. To a whisper of dismay, "They have come for you
already!" he returned with calm: "Never fear--they shan't get me."
The summons was repeated.
"What can you do?" Liane breathed.
"Nothing so long as I am not free to move."
Her arms fell away, but her hands lingered upon his shoulders. In the
passage several men were confabulating in mutters dulled by the
intervening door. One became articulate in vexation: "I tell you, he
didn't get enough dope in that powder to make him sleep like this!"