"I don't like any man to think me a liar." The man spoke slowly between puffs at his cigarette. "You think it's all bunkum that I'm fresh out of Germany, but it isn't. Do you see that?" He ran his finger across the gash in his forehead. "That and the ill-treatment I received in the prison-camps made me go wuzzy. The only fact about myself that
I could remember in all those years was Maisie. So it's natural that I should come to see her first. I wasn't sure of my own identity until a month ago. I suppose I was released at the Armistice, but for seven out of the past eight months I must have wandered in rags over Central Europe. However, all's well that ends well, and here I am."
"But you knew that she'd remarried," Tabs objected suspiciously; "you asked me if I were Gervis."
"A friend of Pollock's told me that," he explained. "Gervis was excusable. But this Lockwood fellow's the third. It's a bit thick! She certainly has been going it." He looked up suddenly. "I've been doing all the talking. What about yourself?"
Tabs crossed the room and opened one of the long French windows which led out into the rockery. The golden afternoon had faded into early evening and a refreshing coolness was in the air. When he came back, he seated himself at the other end of the couch. "Just to show that there's no ill-feeling, I'll accept one of your gaspers, if you'll allow me.—— There's nothing for me to explain. My name is Lord Taborley and I'm a friend of Mrs. Lockwood. There's nothing else."
The stranger leaned forward. His humor left him, revealing his premature haggardness. He laid a hand on Tabs' arm and asked a question. "You're fond of her?"
Tabs eyed him in silence, trying to divine what was intended. "At any rate, you are," he said kindly; "I see it now."
"Not fond of her, I'm in love with her." The
man's face softened as he made the confession. "I was in love with her when she was still the wife of Pollock. I've been through deep waters. I've had to wait for her like Jacob did for Rachel. I've lost most things—my memory, my health, my very likeness! but never for five minutes have I lost my love for her. She was the only star in my darkness——" The words fell from him with somber sincerity. "I don't know whether you understand——"
But Tabs' thoughts had turned inwards. He was living again the englamored poignancy of the years when Terry had been for him precisely that—the only star in his darkness. The intensity of the vision was like a cry of warning rousing his sleeping idealism from its lethargy. His present errand became a treachery to be swept aside by his refound strength. He recognized the intruder with new eyes, not as an enemy, but as a comrade—a comrade marooned on the selfsame island of loneliness and bound to him by the common experience of a kindred adversity. He was like Crusoe discovering the footprint. Here, quite close to him, was a fellow waif who had drunk deep of his own bitter sense of desertion. With a thrill of sympathy, his heart turned to him.