A dry little smile stirred the lips of the actress.
"Sarah," said the mother to the Breton maid, "have you taken good care of my Hilda?"
"She's been a trump, mother!" interrupted the daughter.
"But she looks as if she had been ill."
"No, madame ... the journey...." Two faces, thought the maid, so alike that only the good God Himself might distinguish one from the other!
Her mistress leaned back and closed her eyes. The train would be in the tunnel now and the box in Mathison's hands. What would be his wonder? She could only imagine. But she knew that to him she was The Yellow Typhoon, the Snow-leopard, the gambling woman of the Honan Road.
In a little while all these momentous events would become a vague memory to him. He would shortly be busy with the problems of active warfare. He would never know that a guardian-angel had been at his elbow for days. How easy it was to visualize him!—sitting on the deck beside her chair, that funny little green bird clinging to his shoulder! And then that night, when he told her of his promise to his mother.... The tenderness of his voice! "Am I a mollycoddle?" He had asked her that in all seriousness.... Boy!
His puzzlement would be large for a while; and out of the chaff of speculation he would find the grain of fact: The Yellow Typhoon, to save herself, had betrayed her companions. Thus Berta would escape prison, perhaps death.
Irony! The same ancient story—Hilda, sacrificing herself for Berta, now as always; throwing away what might have been happiness to prevent the ghost from re-entering the life of the white-haired woman at her side. And she was practically turning Berta loose in New York, where she would be likely to draw a stain across a stainless life. Berta, free, there would soon be strange tales afloat, and each and every one of them would be credited to Norma Farrington. No matter, so long as the truth could be kept from the mother. The mockery of the grave in Greenwood!
An infinitesimal clue: she had left that because she would not have been human else. There would be one chance in a million of his understanding. A little green feather—Malachi's—which she had picked off the deck one morning. She had hidden it in the little red book. He would find it, but he would not understand. A miracle, nothing short of that; and this was not the day of miracles.... Good-by!