a chill, a numbness to his heart. His Hands clenched, and he began to pace up and down the room.
How buoyantly he had tackled the problem—buoyant in his own emancipation, buoyant in his love, in the future full of dreams, full of inspiration, full of the new life that Helena and he would live together! How confidently he had settled himself to undo in a moment the work of months, to outline a mere matter of detail, with never a thought that he was face to face with a problem that he could never solve—that brought him to the realization that the game, not he, was the master still, iron-handed, implacable—that though the mental chains were loosed it was but as if, in ironic justice, in grim punishment, only that he might look, clear-visioned, upon the ignominy of the physical shackles he himself had forged and fashioned so readily, whose breaking now was beyond his strength.
He had done his work well! In the first few moments, an hour ago, when he had begun to consider the problem, as seeming difficulties arose, he had turned coolly from one alternative to another. And then slowly a sickening sense of the truth had begun to dawn upon him—and like a man lost in a great forest, peril around him, he had plunged then desperately in this direction and in that, as a glimmering point of light here or there had seemed to promise an avenue of escape—only to find it vanish at almost the first step, the way closed as by some invisible, remorseless
power. No, not invisible—it seemed to take the form of the Patriarch—for at every turn the majestic figure stood and would not let him pass.
Madison's face was gray now as he walked up and down the room—there was his own revulsion, his abhorrence at the part he had played, a frantic, honorable eagerness to be rid of it; there were these others too who looked to him, the Flopper and Pale Face Harry; and there was—Helena! He did not dare to look at the misery in her face again—he was unmanned enough now.
And then Helena spoke.
"It—it seems," she said, in a low broken way, "as if—as if God did not want to pardon us—as if our repentance had come too late, and that there was no Eleventh Hour for us." Then, in passionate pleading, facing Madison: "God cannot mean that—it is we who cannot see. There is some way out—there must be—there must be."
"It begins and ends with the Patriarch," said Madison monotonously. "We can't sacrifice him—can we! What's the use of going over it again? It all comes back to the same point—the Patriarch."
"Yes, yes; I know, I know," she said piteously. "But think, Doc—think! See now, we just send back all the money and jewels—we know to whom they belong."
"Well, what reason do we give?" Madison said heavily. "The Patriarch is alive and well.