“I think, perhaps, it may be just as well if I tell you what I am doing—or, rather, trying to do,” he said quietly.
Then he told her.
“And so you see,” he added, when he had finished the tale, “I haven't really accomplished much, after all, and it seems the little I have accomplished has only led to my being misjudged by you, my best friend.”
Alice gave a sobbing cry. Her face was scarlet. Horror, shame, and relief struggled for mastery in her countenance.
“Oh, but I didn't know, I didn't know,” she moaned, twisting her hands nervously. “And now, when you've been so brave, so true—for me to accuse you of—Oh, can you ever forgive me? But you see, knowing that you did care for her, it did look—” She choked into silence, and turned away her head.
He glanced at her tenderly, mournfully.
“Yes,” he said, after a minute, in a low voice. “I can see how it did look; and so I'm going to tell you now something I had meant never to tell you. There really couldn't have been anything in that, you see, for I found out long ago that it was gone—whatever love there had been for—Billy.”
“But your—tiger skin!”
“Oh, yes, I thought it was alive,” smiled Arkwright, sadly, “when I asked you to help me fight it. But one day, very suddenly, I discovered that it was nothing but a dead skin of dreams and memories. But I made another discovery, too. I found that just beyond lay another one, and that was very much alive.”
“Another one?” Alice turned to him in wonder. “But you never asked me to help you fight—that one!”