Moving blindly toward the stairs, she paused on the first landing and turned to me a tragic face.
"Courage!" I whispered.
Then she found the strength to carry her on to the end of her revulsive errand. I went direct to the study, and waited.
Fluette came in hastily, his manner wild, his face white and haggard. Genevieve, distressed and heart-broken, followed close behind him. She closed the door. The man began speaking at once, incoherently, in a harsh, strident whisper that signified constricted throat muscles.
"So! It's come at last! You—keep it from—from—my God! keep it from my wife and daughter!"
I answered him roughly, in an attempt to keep him from breaking completely down.
"Pull yourself together, man! What sort of way is this to act?" I surveyed his abject figure an instant, then added with some bitterness: "It is not I that you fear, but your own conscience."
I was thinking of the women.
He slumped into a chair, clasped his out-stretched hands upon the writing-table, and allowed his head to droop between his arms. At that moment I heard Belle calling "Papa!" She was running lightly down the stairs. Again she called, and I knew that she was coming swiftly toward the library.
Genevieve made a move as if to bolt the door, but I checked her with a gesture. Of what use would it be to bar the way of her who came so impulsively? The dreadful truth must be broken to her. It was a task that no third person might assume; let her hear it wrung from her father's unwilling lips.