"I can't, Jim. I can't——"
He waited a moment, and then laying Quinlevin's weapon on the table in front of him, turned again and walked out of the door and into the darkness of the corridor.
CHAPTER XIII
BEGINNING A JOURNEY
It would have been easy for Quinlevin to have shot him in the back, and at the moment Jim Horton wouldn't much have cared if he had. He went down the stairs slowly, across the court and out into the street, wandering aimlessly, bare headed, with no sense of any intention or direction. "There's no divorce—but death." Moira's words rang again and again in his brain. That was a part of her creed, her faith, her religion. She had once spoken of what her Church had always meant to her—her Mother, she had called it,—and she was true to her convictions. "There's no divorce—but death." The revelation of her beliefs was not new to him, yet it came to him with a sense of shock that she had chosen at the last to remain with Harry and Quinlevin and all the degradation that the association meant to her. It had been a choice between two degradations, and force of habit had cast the last feather into the balance. In the bitterness of his own situation—isolated, outcast, with no hope of regeneration, he tried to find it in his heart to blame her. But the thought of the pain and bewilderment he had seen in her eyes made him only pitiful for her misfortunes. It seemed as though the shock of the many revelations of the evening had deadened her initiative, enfeebled her fine impulses and made her like a dependent child—at the mercy of custom and tradition. And he could not forget that he had gone to her asking nothing, expecting nothing, and that in spite of all the barriers that she recognized between them, in spite of the deception he had practiced, she had still clung to him and even acknowledged him in the presence of her husband and the man she called her father. Love had glowed in her eyes and in her heart, lifting her for a time above the tragic mystery of her origin and the broken ideals of a lifetime. It was almost enough for him to ask of her.
It didn't seem to matter much now what happened to him. But almost unconsciously he found himself casting an occasional glance over his shoulder to see if he was followed. He had no fear of Harry. His brother had shown to-night in his true colors, but the picturesque scoundrel whose name Moira bore was clearly a person to be reckoned with. Why Quinlevin hadn't taken a pot-shot at him on the stairs was more than Jim Horton could understand, unless some consideration for Moira had held his hand. The impulse of fury that had made him draw his revolver had faded. But their controversy was still unsettled and Jim Horton knew that the one duty left him must be done at once. After he had told what he knew to de Vautrin, Quinlevin could try to kill him if he liked—but not before....
Would the memories of the past prevail in Moira's relations with Quinlevin? Would he be able to convince her that she was the Duc's daughter? He remembered that most of what he had heard from his place of concealment could be susceptible of a double interpretation under the skillful manipulation of the resourceful Irishman.
Jim Horton knew that Piquette had told him the straight story, from Harry's own lips, but he could not violate her confidence by using her name. It meant danger for Piquette from Quinlevin and perhaps a revelation of her breech of Pochard's confidence and a greater danger even from Tricot. He knew that he must move alone and reach the ear of de Vautrin at once with his testimony.
He approached the café of Leon Javet when he heard the light patter of feet behind him and stopped and turned. It was Piquette, divested of her fine raiment and dressed in the simple garb of a midinette.
"Jeem——," she said. "I 'ave been waiting for you—outside——"