It was then that the events of the past forty-eight hours began most to tell upon Billy. His exhausted nerves played him false, and cried out their desperate state.
As he and Jock left the warm, scented room behind them, and faced the white, still cold of an apparently dead St. Angé, the boy turned a drawn face upon Jock, and cried tremblingly, "Say, you better—keep—yer—hands—off!" Jock stood still, and returned Billy's agonized stare with one equally grim.
"I've just reached that conclusion myself, Billy," he said, with every trace of his past mirth gone.
Billy was hoisted on his own petard.
Hatred fled before the sympathy he felt flowing from Jock to him. He wanted to cry; wanted to fling himself upon his companion and "own up," but Jock anticipated all his emotions.
"See here, kid," he said in a voice new to St. Angé's knowledge of Jock; "you're not the fellow to grudge a poor devil an hour or so of heaven. There's the hope of an eternity of it for you; but for me there's going to be only—the memory of this hour. Shake hands, old man, and take this from me, straight. Keep yourself fit to touch. Lay hold of that and never let go. The more you care, the more you'll curse yourself, if you don't. It's the only decent offering a man can take to a woman. Everything else he can hope to gain afterward. A place for her, money, and all the rest; but if he goes to her with dirty hands and a heart full of shame, nothing can make up for it—nothing!
"Billy—I'd give you all I ever hoped to have here or hereafter if I could begin to-night where you are—and with the power to want to keep straight."
Billy shivered and looked dumbly, pathetically into the sad face above him. He had nothing to say. When Jock next spoke he was more like himself.
"Billy, will you see to a little business for me, and keep mum?"
This was quite in the line of the over-burdened Billy, and he accepted off-hand.