Claire alone moved. She rose to her feet, but as though her weight were too heavy for her limbs. Her lips quivered.
“Oh, Hawkins!” she cried out pitifully—and burst into tears, and ran from the room.
It seemed to John Bruce that for a moment the room swirled around before his eyes; and then over him swept an uncontrollable desire to get his hands upon this maudlin, lurching creature. Rage, disgust, a bitter resentment, a mad hunger for reprisal possessed him; Claire's future, her faith which she had but a moment gone so proudly vaunted, were all shattered, swept to the winds, by this seedy, dissolute wreck. Her father! No, her shame! Thank God she did not know!
“You drunken beast!” he gritted in merciless fury, and stepped suddenly forward.
But halfway across the room he halted as though turned to stone. Hawkins wasn't lurching any more. Hawkins had turned and closed the door; and Hawkins now, with his face white and drawn, a look in his old blue eyes that mingled agony and an utter hopelessness, sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
It was Paul Veniza who moved now. He went and stood behind the old cabman.
Hawkins looked up.
“You are sober. What does this mean?” Paul Veniza asked heavily.
Hawkins shook his head.
“I couldn't do it,” he said in a broken voice. “And—and I've settled it once for all now. I got to thinking as I came along to-night, and I found out that it wasn't any good for me to swear I wasn't going to touch anything any more. I'm afraid of myself. I—I came near going into the saloon. It—it taught me something, that did; because the only way I could get by was to promise myself I'd go back there after I'd been here.”