"Will you listen to mine?"
"Do not I always listen to you with the greatest respect?" She was the charming woman again. "Mr. McLane told me that I was to follow your advice—I have an idea you have engineered this whole affair!—But if he hadn't—well, I have every reason to be humbly grateful to you. If this terrible tangle ever unravels I shall owe it to you."
"Then listen to me now. What I said—that his actions prove that he cares for you as much as ever—is true. But—you might come upon him in a condition where he would not recognize you, or was morose from too much drink or too little; and for the moment he would hate you, either because you reminded him too forcibly of what he had been and was, or because it degraded him further to be seen by you in such a state. He could make himself excessively disagreeable sober. Drunk, panic stricken, reckless, I should think he might achieve a masterpiece in that line that would make you feel like ten cents…. This is my plan. I'll go on at once and prepare him. Get him down to his home in Virginia on one pretence or another, sober him up by degrees, and then tell him all you have been through for his sake, and that as soon as you are free you will come to him. He'll be a little more like himself by that time and can stand having you look at him…. It'll be no easy task at first; and I'll have to taper him off to prevent any blow to his heart. There may be relapses, and the whole thing to do over; but I shall use the talisman of your name as soon as he is in a condition to understand, and shall succeed in the end. Once let the idea take hold of him that he can have you at last and it is only a question of time."
She made no reply for a moment. She sat with her eyes on his as he spoke. At first they had opened widely, melted and flashed. But they narrowed slowly. As he finished she turned her profile toward him and he had never seen a cameo look harder.
"That would be an easy way out," she said. "But it does not appeal to me. Nothing easy appeals to me these days. I'll fight my own battles and overcome my own obstacles. Besides, he's mine. He shall owe nothing to any one but to me. I'll find him and cure him myself."
"But you'll have a hard time finding him. He disappears for weeks at a time. Even Tom Lacey might not be able to help you."
"I'll find him."
"You may have to haunt the most abominable places."
"You seem to forget that I have haunted a good many abominable places.
And if they are good enough for him they are good enough for me."
"New York has the worst set of roughs in the world. Our hoodlums are lambs beside them."