“Nonsense!” said Paul Veniza. “I'm all right. Much better. I'll be up to-morrow. But I particularly want to see Hawkins to-night.” He did not particularly want to see Hawkins or any one else, but if he did not have some valid excuse she would most certainly refuse to go out and leave him alone. A little walk and a breath of fresh air would do Claire a world of good. And as for the lateness of the hour, Claire in that section of the city was as safe as in her own home. “Please do as I ask you, Claire,” he insisted.
“Very well, father,” she agreed after a moment's hesitation, and went and put on her hat.
From downstairs, as she opened the front door, she called up to him a little anxiously:
“You are sure you are all right?”
“Quite sure, dear,” Paul Veniza called back. “Don't hurry.”
Claire stepped out on the street. It was not far to go—just around the first corner and halfway down the next block—and at first she walked briskly, impelled by an anxiety to get back to the house again as soon as possible, but insensibly, little by little, her footsteps dragged.
What was it? Something in the night, the darkness, that promised a kindly cloak against the breaking of her self-restraint, that bade her let go of herself and welcome the tears that welled so spontaneously to her eyes? Would it bring relief? To-day, all evening, more than ever before, she had felt her endurance almost at an end. She turned her face upward to the night. It was black; not a star showed anywhere. It seemed as though something dense and forbidding had been drawn like a somber mantle over the world. God, even, seemed far away to-night.
She shivered a little. Could that really be true—that God was turning His face away from her? She had tried so hard to cling to her faith. It was all she had; it was all that of late had stood between her and a despair and misery, a horror so overwhelming that death by contrast seemed a boon.
Her lips quivered as she walked along. It almost seemed as though she did not want to fight any more. And yet there had been a great and very wonderful reward given to her before she had even made the final sacrifice that she had pledged herself to make. If her soul revolted from the association that must come with Doctor Crang, if every instinct within her rose up in stark horror before the contamination of the man's wanton moral filth, one strange and wondrous thing sustained her. And she had no right to mistrust God, for God must have brought her this. She had bought an unknown life—that had become dearer to her than her own, or anything that might happen to her. She knew love. It was no longer a stranger who would live on through the years because she was soon to pay the price that had been set upon his life—it was John Bruce.
Claire caught her hands suddenly to her breast. John Bruce! She was still afraid—for John Bruce. And to-night, all evening, that fear had been growing stronger, chilling her with a sense of evil premonition and foreboding. Was it only premonition? Crang had threatened. She had heard the threats. And she knew out of her own terrible experience that Crang, as between human life and his own desires, held human life as naught. And yet, surely John Bruce was safe from him now—at least his life was safe. That was how Crang had wrung the promise from her. No, she was not so sure! There was personal enmity between them now. Besides, if anything happened she would not be able to bring it to Crang's door—Crang would take care of that—and her promise would still hold. And so she was afraid.