She felt her fingers caught in a cruel grasp. Her joy-dewed glance was scorched by his malevolence.
Back drew the sneering lips over white, fang-like teeth. “You really think he’ll draw a ticket down here—that hero? Fool, you have too much faith in the judgments of men!”
With repression more ominous than any outburst could have been, he turned on his heel.
“Come home,” he said.
As has so many a submissive woman soul before her, Dolores tried to hide within her heart her blissful expectation. But she trod on air as she followed out of the stadium.
Splendidly John had gone through the formality of lifting the mortgage contracted at his birth—that debt of life put upon all, which may be paid only in the coinage of death.
Soon, now, he would come to her.
CHAPTER XXV
It was “afterward.” There could be no doubt of that. His Highness, so far as Dolores was concerned, had retired into one of his silences. He must be enraged with her for her interference in the pool play. But for what could he be waiting?
True, the concession for which she had offered to pay any price was no longer an issue. There was no need now for her to be put in spirit connection with Earth, even had she not discovered that her own concentrated will could accomplish the projection—that the dead might return to their quondam surroundings, ruling and being ruled through senses stronger far than physical. Could she sooner have realized this of the strange laws which governed her present state of existence, what heart-hurts of foreboding and regret she might have spared John and herself!