“Yolande?”
“Yes. O, my God!”
He felt for her, touched her in the darkness. His heart was on a sudden kind and pitiful.
“Poor child! poor child! How did you hear—come—find the means? These long years—I’ve no right to ask you of them.”
“No need to, neither. They find me what I always was—your woman. Well, I’ve got a rope about me. Will you take it?”
“Not I.”
“O, O! Why not?”
“Owe my life to her whose life I’ve ruined.”
“She found the rope, I say; and the pass to let me bring it to you private—paid for it, too.”
“Paid? Whom?”