She met his look with her wide eyes. "But why not?" she said. "We love each other."
He turned from her, grinding the floor with his heel. "God help me to make myself intelligible!" he said.
It was the most forcible prayer she had ever heard. It struck through to her very soul. She stood motionless, but she felt crushed and numb.
Ranger walked to the end of the room and then came straight back to her.
"Look here!" he said. "This is the most damnable thing I've ever had to do. Let's get it over! He's a rotter and a blackguard. Can you grasp that? He hasn't lived a clean life all these years he's been away from you. He went wrong almost at the outset. He's the sort that always does go wrong. I've done my best for him. Anyhow, I've kept him going. But I can't make a decent man of him. No one can. He has lucid intervals, but they get shorter and shorter. Just at present—" he paused momentarily, then plunged on—"I told you last night he wasn't ill. That was a lie. He is down with delirium tremens, and it isn't the first time."
"Ah!" Sylvia said. He had made her understand at last. She stood for a space staring at him, then with a groping movement she found and grasped the back of a chair. "Why—why did you lie to me?" she said.
"I did it for your sake," he answered briefly. "You couldn't have faced it then."
"I see," she said, and paused to collect herself. "And does he—does he realize that I am here?" she asked painfully. "Doesn't he—want to see me?"
"Just now," said Ranger grimly, "he is too busy thinking about his own troubles to worry about anyone else's. He does know you are coming. He was raving about it two nights ago. Then came your wire from Cape Town. That was what brought me here to meet you."
"I see," she said again. "You—you have been very good. It would have been dreadful if—if I had been stranded here alone."