CHAPTER XLV
WRITING A LETTER TO THEODORE
The first thing Jinnie saw the next morning was the rough draft of the letter Molly had ordered her to copy. To send it to Theodore was asking more of her than she could bear. She turned and looked at Bobbie. He was still sleeping his troubled, short-breathed sleep. She had shielded him with her life, with her liberty. Now he demanded, in that helpless, babyish, blind way of his, that she repudiate her love.
In the loneliness of the gorge house she had become used to the idea of never again seeing Theodore, but to allow him to think the false thing in that letter was dreadful. She picked it up and glanced it over once more, then dropped it as if the paper had scorched her fingers. She’d die rather than send it, and she would tell her uncle so when he came that morning.
She was very quiet, more than usually so, when she gave the blind boy his breakfast.
“Bobbie,” she said, “you know I’d do anything for you in this whole world, don’t you? I mean—I mean anything I could?”
Mystified, the boy bobbed his curly head.
“Sure I do, Jinnie, and I’d do anything for you too, honey.”
She kissed him passionately, as her eyes sought the letter once more. It lay on the floor, the words gleaming 310 up at her in sinister mockery. She tore her eyes from it, shaking in dread. Would she have the courage to stand against Jordan Morse in this one thing? She had given in to him at every point, but this time she intended to stand firmly upon the rock of her love. Once more she picked up the letter and put it away.