His eyes glowed with a sombre light. There was a world of repressed passion in his tone, the resentful snarl, as he thought of the past squalor and bitterness of life, mingling with the savage determination and unscrupulous recklessness of the born adventurer.
"There is one thing you cannot obtain for it," she said. "That is—love."
"But it can bring you all that will cause you to feel no longing for that deceptive illusion. You can forget that such a thing exists—can forget it in the renewed exuberance of vitality which is sheer enjoyment of living. Well, wish me luck. 'Good-bye' is a dreadful word, but it has to be said."
He had risen and stood blindly, half-bewilderedly. The shaded room, the sensuous fragrance of her presence, every graceful movement, the fascination of the wide, earnest eyes, all was more than beginning to intoxicate him, to shatter his chain-armour of bitterness and self-control. He, the strong, the invulnerable, the man in whom all heart and feeling was dead—what sorcery was this? He was bewitched, entranced, enthralled. His strength was as water. Yet not.
They stood facing each other, glance fused into glance. At that moment heart seemed opened to heart—to be gazing therein.
"Good-bye," he said. "Don't quite forget me, Lilith dear. Think a little now and then of the times we have had together." Then their lips met in a long kiss. And she said—nothing. Perhaps she could not. The flood-gate of an awful torrent of pent-up, bravely controlled grief may be opened in the utterance of that word "good-bye."
Laurence Stanninghame seemed to walk blindly, staggering in the strong sunlight. Was it the midday heat, or the strong glare? The ever-monotonous beat of the Crown Reef stamps seemed to hammer within his brain, which seethed and swirled with the recollection of that last long kiss. He would not look back. Impervious to the furnace-like heat, he stepped out over the veldt at a pace which, by the time he reached the corner of the Wemmer property, caused him to look up wonderingly, that he should already be entering the town.
"Oh, there you are, Stanninghame," sung out a voice, whose owner nearly cannoned into him. Laurence looked up.
"Here I am, as you say, Holmes," he answered, quite coolly and unconcernedly. "But where are you bound for, and what's the excitement, anyway?"