"I don't want you to reproach yourself about this. I understand, dear. The right man came along, and of course you couldn't wait for me to come back to give my sanction."
"Oh! Jack! I ought to have waited: I know it. You have been so good to me"
"I've been good to myself, being with you," he returned tenderly. "But I almost wish you had told me over the telephone. You would never have known how I felt, and it would have been better all around"
He bent toward me, and crushed both my hands in his, looking into my face with a gaze that was in itself a caress.
"Now you must go home, little girl, back to—your—husband." The words came slowly.
"When shall I see you again, Jack?" I knew the answer even before it came.
"When you need me, dear girl, if you ever do," he replied. "I can't be near you without loving you and hating your husband, whoever he may be, and that is a dangerous state of affairs. But, wherever I am, a note or a wire to the Hotel Alfred will be forwarded to me, and, if the impossible should happen and your husband ever fail you, remember, Jack is waiting, ready to do anything for you."
My tears were falling fast now. Jack laid his hand upon my shoulder.
"Come, Margaret, you must control yourself," he said in his old brotherly voice. "I want you to tell me your new name and address. I'm never going to lose track of you, remember that. You won't see me, but your big brother will be on the job just the same."
I told him, and he wrote it carefully down in his note-book. Then he looked at me fixedly.