They looked at each other for a moment and then Lynda drew away her hand.
“Thanks, Con, and please miss us a little, but not too much. What will you do to pass the time until we return?”
“I think”—Truedale pulled himself up sharply—“I think I’ll go up under the eaves and get out—the old play!”
“Oh! how splendid! And you will—let me hear it—some day, soon?”
“Yes. Business is going easier now. I can think of it without neglecting better things. Good-night, Lyn. Tuck your coat up close, the night’s bad.”
And then, alone in the warm, bright room, Truedale had a distinct sense of Lynda having taken something besides herself away. She had left the room hideously lonely; it became unbearable to remain there and, like a boy, Conning ran up to the small room next the roof.
He took the old play out—he had not unpacked it since he came from Pine Cone! He laid it before him and presently became absorbed in reading it from the beginning. It was after eleven when he raised his tired eyes from the pages and leaned back in his chair.
“I’m like—all men!” he muttered. “All men—and I thought things had gone deeper with me.”
What he was recognizing was that the play and the subtle influence that Nella-Rose had had upon him had both lost their terrific hold. He could contemplate the past without the sickening sense of wrong and shock that had once overpowered him. Realizing the full meaning of all that had gone into his past experience, he found himself thinking of Lynda as she had looked a few hours before. He resented the lesser hold the past still had upon him—he wanted to shake it free. Not bitterly—not with contempt—but, he argued, why should his life be shadowed always by a mistake, cruel and unpardonable as it was, when she, that little ignorant partner in the wrong, had gone her way and had doubtless by now put him forever from her mind?
How small a part it had played with her, poor child. She had been betrayed by her strange imagination and suddenly awakened passion; she had followed blindly where he had led, but when catastrophe had threatened one who had been part of her former life—familiar with all that was real to her—how readily the untamed instinct had reverted to its own!