The other turned. His eyes were moist. He saw the alteration in Gordon’s mood.
“George,” he urged huskily, “do you not owe it to some one else?”
There was some one else—not the one Dallas meant—some one he had not seen! Gordon’s gaze turned, too, to the river, flowing now like liquid lead with an oily scum under a smoky char that, while they talked, had been swiftly rising to paint out the quivering track of the sun. The launch was speeding for the opposite landing, the musicians covering their instruments. Even if all Dallas said were true! Go back—and leave Teresa? For Ada’s sake, who would live to bear his name, to return to an empty reinstatement, and stifle with the pulpy ashes of dead fires this love that warmed his new life! For Ada’s sake—go back, and leave Teresa?
The visitor spoke again. When he had asked that question, a child not a woman had been in his thought. He had not told all he had come to say.
“I have been to Seaham, George; I went to Lady Noël’s funeral.”
His hearer started. “You saw Ada?” he asked, his features whitening. “You saw her?” He clutched Dallas’ wrist. “She is six years old. Did she speak my name, Dallas? What do they teach her of me?”
The other’s tone was almost as strained; the story he had to tell was a hard one.
“Your portrait, the large one painted the year you were married, hung above the mantelpiece. It was covered with a heavy curtain. Lady Noël’s will forbade that the child should see it before her twentieth year. Laddie, Ada has never heard your name!”
Dallas stopped abruptly at the look on Gordon’s face. No anger showed there, only the dull gray of mortal hurt. A curious moaning sound had arisen, forerunner of the sultry tempest that had been gathering, rapid as anger. The cicalas had ceased shrilling from the garden. A peculiar warm dampness was in the air and a drop of rain splashed on the marble sill.
“Do you wonder,” Dallas continued after a pause, “that I want you to go back?”