"I knew you'd be here; no, they didn't tell me, but I knew it—I would have staked my life on it, Margery, girl," he said, in the first lucid interval.
"And you—you've paid the Price, haven't you, Kenneth? but, oh, boy, dear! I've paid it, too! Don't you believe me?"
There was another interruption, and because the carriage windows were open, the negro driver grinned and confided a remark to his horses. Then the transgressor began again.
"Where are you taking me, Margery?—not that it makes any manner of difference."
"We are going by train to New Orleans, and this—this—very—evening we are to be married, in Mr. Galbraith's house. And Uncle Andrew is going to give the bride away. It's all arranged."
"And after?"
"Afterward, we are going away—I don't know where. I just told dear old Saint Andrew to buy the tickets to anywhere he thought would be nice, and we'd go. I don't care where it is—do you? And when we get there, I'll buy you a pen and some ink and paper, and you'll go on writing the book, just as if nothing had happened. Say you will, boy, dear; please say you will! And then I'll know that—the price—wasn't—too great."
He was looking out of the carriage window when he answered her, across to the levee and beyond it to the farther shore of the great river, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who has seen of the travail of his soul and is satisfied.
"I shall never write that book, little girl. That story, and all the mistakes that were going to the making of it, lie on the other side of—the Price. But one day, please God, there shall be another and a worthier one."
"Yes—please God," she said; and the dark eyes were shining softly.