And I knew then that my dread dream had come true.
Peter advanced into the room with his old easy grace of manner. His eyes glowed as he looked at Blackie. Then he laughed, showing his even, white teeth. “Why, you little liar!” he said, in his crisp, clear English. “I’ve a notion to thwack you. What d’ you mean by telling me my wife’s gone? You’re not sweet on her yourself, eh?”
Von Gerhard stifled an exclamation, and Orme turned quickly in his direction. “Who are you?” he asked. “Still another admirer? Jolly time you were having when I interrupted.” He stared at Von Gerhard deliberately and coolly. A little frown of dislike came into his face. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you? I knew it. I can tell by the hands, and the eyes, and the skin, and the smell. Lived with ’em for ten years, damn them! Dawn, tell these fellows they’re excused, will you? And by the way, you don’t seem very happy to see me?”
I went up to him then, and laid my hand on his arm. “Peter, you don’t understand. These two gentlemen have been all that is kind to me. I am happy to know that you are well again. Surely you do not expect me to be joyful at seeing you. All that pretense was left out of our lives long before your—illness. It hasn’t been all roses for me since then, Peter. I’ve worked until I wanted to die with weariness. You know what this newspaper game is for a woman. It doesn’t grow easier as she grows older and tireder.”
“Oh, cut out the melodrama, Dawn,” sneered Peter. “Have either of you fellows the makin’s about you? Thanks. I’m famished for a smoke.”
The worrying words of ten years ago rose automatically to my lips. “Aren’t you smoking too much, Peter?” The tone was that of a harassed wife.
Peter stared. Then he laughed his short, mirthless little laugh. “By Jove! Dawn, I believe you’re as much my wife now as you were ten years ago. I always said, you know, that you would have become a first-class nagger if you hadn’t had such a keen sense of humor. That saved you.” He turned his mocking eyes to Von Gerhard. “Doesn’t it beat the devil, how these good women stick to a man, once they’re married! There’s a certain dog-like devotion about it that’s touching.”
There was a dreadful little silence. For the first time in my knowledge of him I saw a hot, painful red dyeing Blackie’s sallow face. His eyes had a menace in their depths. Then, very quietly, Von Gerhard stepped forward and stopped directly before me.
“Dawn,” he said, very softly and gently, “I retract my statement of an hour ago. If you will give me another chance to do as you asked me, I shall thank God for it all my life. There is no degradation in that. To live with this man—that is degradation. And I say you shall not suffer it.”
I looked up into his face, and it had never seemed so dear to me. “The time for that is past,” I said, my tone as calm and even as his own. “A man like you cannot burden himself with a derelict like me—mast gone, sails gone, water-logged, drifting. Five years from now you’ll thank me for what I am saying now. My place is with this other wreck—tossed about by wind and weather until we both go down together.” There came a sharp, insistent ring at the door-bell. No answering sound came from the regions above stairs. The ringing sounded again, louder than before.