"Yes, Dowie," he answered. "All is well and no one but ourselves will ever know. The marriage in the dark old church is no longer a marriage. Only the first one—which he can prove—stands."
The telling of his story to Donal had been a marvellous thing because he had so controlled its drama that it had even been curiously undramatic. He had made it a mere catalogued statement of facts. As Donal had lain listening his heart had seemed to turn over in his breast.
"If I had known you!" he panted low. "If we had known each other! We did not!"
Later, bit by bit, he told him of Jackson—only of Jackson. He never spoke of other things. When put together the "bit by bit" amounted to this:
"He was a queer, simple sort of American. He was full of ideals and a kind of unbounded belief in his country. He had enlisted in Canada at the beginning. He always believed America would come in. He was sure the Germans knew she would and that was why they hated Americans. The more they saw her stirred up, the more they hated the fellows they caught—and the worse they treated them. They were hellish to Jackson!"
He had stopped at this point and Coombe had noted a dreaded look dawning in his eyes.
"Don't go on, my boy. It's bad for you," he broke in.
Donal shook his head a little as if to shake something away.
"I won't go on with—that," he said. "But the dream—I must tell you about that. It saved me from going mad—and Jackson did. He believed in a lot of things I'd not heard of except as jokes. He called them New Thought and Theosophy and Christian Science. He wasn't clever, but he believed. And it helped him. When I'm stronger I'll try to tell you. Subconscious mind and astral body came into it. I had begun to see things—just through starvation and agony. I told him about Robin when I scarcely knew what I was saying. He tried to hold me quiet by saying her name to me over and over. He'd pull me up with it. He began to talk to me about dreaming. When your body's not fed—you begin to see clear—if your spirit is not held down."