He placed her in the chair from which he had risen, as he spoke, and threw himself on his knees beside her.
‘Do you know what I have suffered during your illness?’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought the suspense would have driven me mad. And then the awful fear lest you should betray yourself. But tell me, Quita, is all danger over? Is our secret safe?’
‘Yes!’ she answered wearily. ‘It is over.’
‘Thank Heaven for that! And no one is the wiser.’
‘No one except Dr Fellows, of course. I couldn’t deceive him. But even Liz does not know. No one knows except him—and you and me.’
‘And the child, dearest. Where is it?’
The girl gave a sudden gesture of repugnance.
‘Don’t speak of it: I cannot bear the thought. I am trying so hard to forget everything. And yet, Henri, I must speak, for this once only. Dr Fellows has sent it away to some one up the hills, but I shall never be happy till it is out of San Diego. Cannot you manage it for me? Can’t you send it away to America or England, so that I may never hear it spoken of again?’
‘Perhaps you would like me to drop it in the sea,’ he answered gloomily. It cannot be pleasant for a man to hear a woman express nothing but horror of the child she has borne to him.
‘I don’t know what I want,’ rejoined Quita sadly, ‘only I am so frightened of what may happen. If my father should ever come to hear of it, I think he would kill me.’