"Ah! There came the rub. But did Rotherby ever stick to anything? It was a jolly good thing he died—for all concerned. Yet, you know, he cared for her to the last. Blackguard as he was, he carried her in his heart right up to his death. I tell you I was with him, and I know."
There was strong insistence in the man's words. Durant could feel the racing pulse leap and quiver under his hand. He leaned forward a little, looking closely into the drawn face.
"I think you have talked enough," he said. "Try to get some rest."
"I haven't raved," said Ford, with confidence. "It has done me good to talk. I can't help thinking of Leo Rotherby. My brain runs on him. He wanted to see you—horribly—before he died. I believe he'd have asked your forgiveness. But you wouldn't have given it to him, I suppose? You will never forgive him in your heart?"
Again the answer did not come at once. Durant was frowning a little—the frown of a man who tries to fathom his own secret impulses.
"I think," he said at last, "that if I had seen him and he had asked for it, I should not have refused my forgiveness."
"No one ever refused Rotherby anything," said the dying man, with a curious, half-humorous twist of his mouth under its dark moustache.
"Except yourself," Durant reminded him, almost involuntarily.
Again the wandering, uneasy eyes sought his. "You mean—that drain of water," Ford said, with a total lack of shame or remorse. "Yes, it's true Rotherby didn't have that. But it didn't make any difference, you know. He was going to die. And the living come before the dead, eh, doctor?"
Durant did not quite understand his tone, but he suffered the words to go unchallenged. He was not there to discuss the higher morality with a dying man. Moreover, he knew that the bare mention of water was a fiery torture to him, disguise it as he might.