"Precious one! You're a star heroine, and a martyr and a saint, and I don't know what not. But most of all, you are my life—my very life. I've had a big disappointment since I parted from you—lost a thing I'd wanted for years—lost it to Roger Sands. His revenge for—I hardly know what! Yet finding you and holding you like this shows me that nothing else matters. What's a house, anyhow, except this darling house not made with hands—your little body, house of your soul? When you know me better, could you learn to love me, do you think, if I try hard to teach you?"
"Oh, but I do love you already," said Clo, as a matter of course. "Even that first night—there was something about you—I hated to cheat and rob you the way I did. And it was wonderful hearing your voice in the telephone, in Peterson's dreadful room. It wasn't only that I hoped you'd help, it was because it was you—because you were different for me from anybody else, different even from Angel."
"Good Lord, I should hope so!"
"And I've wanted you dreadfully ever since. That's why I thought it must be heaven when I woke up just now and saw you."
"You angel!"
"How funny you should call me that. Oh, I've almost forgotten my poor Angel! I must get to her, somehow." Clo looked around hastily, and realized that she was lying on a bed in a peculiarly unattractive room, and that O'Reilly was kneeling on the floor by the bedside. "How wicked of me to think more about you than her!"
"If you mean Mrs. Sands, you shall go to her when you're able. Mrs. Sands is all right. You sent her something rather important by Miss Blackburne, the pearl-stringer that you told me about that night in the taxi—and in Krantz's Keller. I talked to the woman—and cursed myself afterward for stopping to speak, when I found you and saw how every instant had counted. I oughtn't to have waited even for a second."
"Oh, you couldn't have saved me if you'd come up without speaking to Ellen. The shot was fired before I threw out the bag with the pearls," Clo broke in. "I remember now. Someone fired through the hole in the door. It was Chuff, I'm sure. It didn't hurt much. It was like a heavy blow, and I couldn't help dropping on my knees at the window. I felt weak and queer, but I called to Ellen. Then somebody picked me up—Kit, I think. I could hear them arguing what to do with me. Funny! I thought of you then—and that's the last I remember till now."
"I must have been in the house by that time," O'Reilly soothed her. "I had come for you! I was sure you'd be where Kit was, because of the pearls. Denham and I had been trying to track Churn and Kit and Chuff—all the lot you told me about—ever since you turned me down, in Krantz's Keller."
"I didn't turn you down!"