“I––I’m played out––but I can go on.” Larry’s voice was husky and he drooped against Jan-an. Then Mary-Clare came forward, her arms opened wide, a radiance breaking over her cold white face.
“You have come––home, Larry! Home. Your father’s home.”
And then Larry’s head rested on her shoulder; her arms upheld him, for the crutch clattered to the floor.
“My father’s home,” he repeated like a hurt child––“that’s it––my father’s home.”
CHAPTER XXII
But beyond that exalted moment stretched the plain, drear days. Days holding subtle danger and marvellous revelations.
Larry, with his superficial gripping of surface things, grew merry and childishly happy. He had paid a debt, God knew. Shocked by the Maclin exposure, he had been roused to decency and purpose as he had never been before. He felt now that he had redeemed the past, and Mary-Clare’s gentleness and kindness meant but one thing to Rivers. And he wanted that thing. His own partial regeneration had been evolved through hours of remorse and contrition. Alone, under strange skies and during long, danger-filled nights, he had caught a glimpse of his poor, shivering soul, and it had brought him low in fear, then high in hope.
“Perhaps, if I pay and pay”––he had pleaded with the sad thing––“I can win out yet!”