“Did he know your reason?” asked Tom.
“Not until last night. When he knew it, he killed himself.”
“Because—?” began Tom.
“Because he had loved and trusted me for half a lifetime—because I was the one human creature to whom he had confided the tragedy of his life—knowing he would be sure of comprehension and sympathy. It was to me he poured forth the story of that poor child. You saw her die. She was his sister. And I——”
Tom turned and looked at the face of the dead man and then, slowly, to the face of the living one, who stood before him.
“You—were the man?” he said.
“Yes.”
Tom turned to the dead man again. He put his big, warm hand with a curiously suggestive movement—a movement somehow suggesting protection—upon the stiff, clasped fingers.
“No, poor fellow!” he said, as if speaking to him. “You—no, no, there was nothing but this—for you. God have mercy on us.”
“No,” said Baird, “there was nothing else for him. I know that. Everything was whirled away. I had hours last night thinking there is nothing else for me. Perhaps there is not. But first I shall take his body back to his mother. I must tell her lies. This is the result of an accident. That is what I shall tell her. She is a little old woman who will not live long. I must take care of her—and let her talk to me about her son who loved me—and her daughter.”