She shook her head. “You do not argue well,” she said softly. “If I have brought this to you, John, I am so glad—so glad for this, too. Oh, I cannot tell you how glad I am, for, because I loved you, the knowledge of what your life was hurt me. But I had faith in you, John, as I always shall have. So don't you see”—the brave little smile came again—“that this is a reward, something tangible and great, to make still more worth while the promise that I made?”
He stared at her. He swept his hand across his eyes. She seemed—she seemed to be slipping away from him—beyond—beyond his reach.
“That man!” he said desperately. “You said you knew him—but you do not know him. He is the head and front and brains of a gang of crooks. I know! He held me a prisoner in their dirty lair, a hidden place, a cellar over in the slums—like rats they were. He is a criminal, and a dangerous one—while he masquerades with his medicine. God alone knows the crimes, if there are any, that he has not committed. He is a foul, unclean and filthy thing, debauched and dissolute, a moral leper. Claire, do you understand all this—that his life is pollution and defilement, that love to him is lust, that your innocence——”
With a broken, piteous cry, Claire stopped him.
And again he stared at her. She did not speak, but in her eyes he read the torment of a far greater and fuller appreciation of the price than he, he knew, though it turned his soul sick within him, could ever have.
And suddenly he covered his face with his hands.
“Bought!” he said brokenly in his agony. “Oh, my God, this has bought me!”
He felt his hands drawn away, and her two palms laid upon his cheeks. He looked at her. How white she was!
“Help me, John,” she said steadily. “Don't—don't make it harder.”
She reached out and touched the bell button beside the seat. In a subconscious way he remembered that was the signal for Hawkins to bring the traveling pawn-shop to the end of its circuit around the block in its old-time trips to Persia. He made no effort to stop her. There was something of ultimate finality in her face and eyes that answered, before it was uttered, the question that stumbled on his lips.