“Walk back up the road with us, dear,” she said, “and tell us how and where you go.”
“I have but a minute to spare,” said Rachel. “Let me say good-bye to you both here——”
“No, by heaven, you shall not,” burst out the doctor in a suppressed voice of fire which startled Juliet. “You owe me ten minutes, in place of the last letter you haven’t answered. There are a score of them, you know—but the last has to be answered somehow.”
Rachel hesitated. “Very well,” she said at length, “but only with Mrs. Robeson.”
“Can’t you trust me?” He was angry now.
“Yes—but not myself,” she answered, so low he barely caught the words. He seized her hand.
“Then trust me for us both,” he said, so instantly gentle and tender that Juliet found it possible to say what a moment before she had thought unwise enough: “Go with him, Ray, dear. I think it is his right.”
So presently she found herself crossing her own lawn alone, while the two who had just left her went slowly on up the road together. Her heart was beating hard and painfully, for she loved them both, and foresaw for them only the hardest interview of their lives.
At the end of half an hour Rachel Redding stood again upon her own porch, and Roger Barnes looked up at her from the walk below with heavy eyes.