“Not long, Code.” Her voice was all sympathy. “It is simply the result of brooding among our people who have so little in their lives. I’m sorry. What will you do? Go away somewhere else?”
He looked at her quickly––scorn written upon his face.
“Go away,” he repeated, “and admit my own guilt? Well, hardly. I’ll stay here and see this 8 thing through if I have to do it in the face of all of them.”
“Splendid, Code!” she cried, clapping her hands. “Just what I knew you would say. And, remember, I will help you all I can and whenever you need me.”
He looked at her gratefully and she thrilled with triumph. At last there was something more in his glance than the purely impersonal; he had awakened at last, she thought, to what she might mean to him.
There followed one of those pauses that often occur when two people are thinking intensely on different subjects. For perhaps five minutes the cheerful fire crackled on uninterrupted. Then, suddenly recollecting himself, Code sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
“Half-past ten,” he said, glancing at the mahogany chime-clock on the mantelpiece. “I must really go. It has been kind of you to have me up to-night and tell me all these––”
“Inner secrets of your own life that you never suspected before?” she laughed.
“Exactly. You have done me a service like the good old friend you always were.”
She took his hand, and he noticed that hers was a trifle cold. They started toward the hallway.