From the Housetops

by George Barr McCutcheon

"If you are afraid," she demanded quickly, "why do you invite peril this afternoon? The chances are against you, Braden. Give it up. Tell them you cannot—"

"This afternoon?" he broke in, rather violently. "Good God, Anne, I'm not afraid of what is going to happen this afternoon. Marraville isn't going to die to-day, poor wretch. I can't afford to let him die." He almost snarled the words. "I have told these people that if I fail to take him through this business to-day, I'll accept no pay. That is understood. The newspapers will be so informed in case of failure. You are shocked. Well, it isn't as bad as it sounds. I am in deadly earnest in this matter. It is my one great chance. It means more to me to save James Marraville's life than it means to him. I'm sorry for him, but he has to go on living, just the same. Thank you for being interested. Don't worry about it. I—"

"The evening papers will tell me how it turns out," she said dully. "I shall pray for you, Braden."

He turned on her savagely. "Don't do that!" he almost shouted. "I don't want your support. I—" Other words surged to his lips but he held them back. She drew back as if he had struck her a blow in the face. "I—I beg your pardon," he muttered, and then strode across the room to thump violently on the door to Lutie's bed-chamber. "Come out! I'm going. Can't keep the nation waiting, you know."

Two minutes later Anne and Lutie were alone. The former, inwardly shaken despite an outward appearance of composure, declined to remain for luncheon, as she had done the day before. Her interest in Lutie and her affairs was lost in the contemplation of a reviving sense of self-gratification, long dormant but never quite unconscious. She had recovered almost instantly from the shock produced by his violent command, and where dismay had been there was now a warm, grateful rush of exultation. She suspected the meaning of that sudden, fierce lapse into rudeness. Her heart throbbed painfully, but with joyous relief. It was not rudeness on his part; on the contrary he was paying tribute to her. He was dismayed by the feelings he found himself unable to conquer. The outburst was the result of a swift realisation that she still had the power to move him in spite of all his mighty resolves, in spite even of the contempt he had for her.

She walked to the Ritz. It was a long distance from George's home, but she went about it gladly in preference to the hurried, pent-up journey down by taxi or stage. She wanted to be free and unhampered. She wanted to think, to analyse, to speculate on what would happen next. For the present she was content to glory in the fact that he had unwittingly betrayed himself.

She was near the Plaza before the one great, insurmountable obstacle arose in her mind to confound her joyous calculations. What would it all come to, after all? She could never be more to him than she was at this instant, for between them lay the truth about the death of Templeton Thorpe,—and Templeton Thorpe was her husband. Her exaltation was short-lived. The joy went out of her soul. The future looked to be even more barren than before the kindly hope sprang up to wave its golden prospects before her deluded eyes.

He would never look at the situation from her point of view. Even though he found himself powerless to resist the love that was regaining strength enough to batter down the wall of prejudice her marriage had created in his mind, there would still stand between them his conviction that it would be an act of vileness to claim or even covet the wife of the man whose life he had taken, not in anger or reprisal but in honest devotion.

Anne was not callous or unfeeling in her readiness to disregard what he might be expected to call the ethics of the case. She very sensibly looked at the question as one in which the conscience had no part, for the simple reason that there was no guilty motive to harass it. If his conscience was clear,—and it most certainly was,—there could be no sound reason for him to deny himself the right to reclaim that which belonged to him by all the laws of nature. On her part there was not the slightest feeling of revulsion. She did not look upon his act as a barrier. Her own act in betraying him was far more of a barrier than this simple thing that he had done. She had believed it to be insurmountable. She had long ago accepted as final the belief that he despised her and would go on doing so to the end. And now, in the last hour, there had been a revelation. He still loved her. His scorn, his contempt, his disgust were not equal to the task of subduing the emotion that lived in spite of all of them. But this other thing! This thing that he would call decency!

All through the afternoon his savage, discordant cry: "Don't do that!" rang in her ears. She thrilled and crumpled in turn. The blood ran hot once more in her veins. As she looked back over the past year it seemed to her that her blood had been cold and sluggish. But now it was warm again and tingling. Even the desolating thought that her discovery would yield no profit failed to check the riotous, grateful warmth that raced through her body from crown to toe. Despair had its innings, but there was always compensation in the return of a joy that would not acknowledge itself beaten. Joy enough to feel that he could not help loving her! Joy to feel that he was hungry too! No matter what happened now she would know that she had not lost all of him.