“Did she tell you what she said when I went to take her in the boat?” blazed Steve.
Mrs. Dan looked startled and a little puzzled. “She said nothing much about the boat,” she admitted. “But I don’t think she remembered much of it, Steve. She was half dazed and bewildered, I think, and I don’t wonder at it. Look what she’d been through.”
Steve laughed harshly. “Dazed,” he said scornfully; “aye, maybe she was dazed. But even when she hadn’t all her sense about her, the words came of themselves; her mind wasn’t working free enough to hold back the thoughts that were deep in her mind. I’ll not repeat what she said—it makes me run hot and cold now to think of it, and all it meant to me. And if she didn’t tell it of her free will, please don’t ask her for it. And I’d been beginning to hope again—I thought ... but what good is the talk of it? It’s finished. I’m done,” and he threw out his hands with a little gesture of finality.
Mrs. Dan looked long and sorrowfully at his set face, with the gripped teeth and the bitter eyes, and sighed heavily.
“Very well, Stevie lad; I’ll say no more. They tell me you’re going. Will ye see me and say good-bye before you go?”
“If I’m sober enough,” said Steve, recklessly, “but I’m doing my best to get drunk to-day. I might as well make a finish in keeping with my character.”
“I can’t say good-bye here, Steve,” she said. “And if you come to the house to say it, I’ll promise you’ll see or be seen by nobody but myself. So come.”
“I’ll come then,” he said abruptly, and they turned and walked to join Dan, and came up off the bridge together, and parted at the door of the hotel.
Steve found the other two men sleeping, for they had had a late and wild night of it; and Steve went and flung himself into a chair and sat moodily alone, not even drinking, for the savour had gone out of the drink and the talk; and the thoughts raised by the talk with Mrs. Dan burned in his brain as bad as the fevered wounds in his breast.
He would not see her—not he. He had been flouted and scorned and whipped with thoughts and words and looks enough to last him his life. He cursed himself for a fool for taking the thing so much to heart, and wondered fiercely why ever he had hoped again after that night. And, almost without knowing it, he began to imagine and picture the interview with her, if, after all, he went to Mrs. Dan’s and asked to see her. She would be polite, of course, and thank him again for saving her, but cold politeness would cut him keener than open anger, and he would only be tempted to flaunting and taunting. And what was the good of all that? And if she met him kindly and spoke softly and held out her hands to him.... He roused himself and sneered at his thoughts, and bound himself with new oaths to be done with her—to see no more of her—to suffer, if so be he had to suffer, without her looking on the suffering.