"No, no—to consider me. Please, please listen—please consider me."
"But you—I thought you——"
"Randall"—she had regained a little of her first coolness—"I'm done for. I found that out to-day. I've a year to live, at most. A scant year, if it's to be like this. Try to grasp it. I've wanted so much, had so little of life. But, I must go, they tell me. Can you understand what that means, as well as I understood what this meant to you—a sentence of death, a few little months to snatch at happiness?"
He stared at her uncertainly, but half comprehending. She saw that the drink was affecting him at last. His eyes were dulled, his face had lost its centered look.
"Going to die, Eleanor? Die in a year? What rot! Don't talk rot. Nobody dies in a year." He spoke carefully, with a deliberate attack on each word, as if he mistrusted his tongue.
"But it's true, Randall, I swear it's true. Can you understand?"
"Understand?" he repeated, and through her tense absorption she was astonished to see on his face an incredible look of pity. "Understand? Why, of course! And it's too bad, my girl. Poor Eleanor! Die in a year—why wouldn't I understand? But never mind"—he seemed to search clumsily for words of cheer. "Death isn't anything but an incident in the scheme of life—a precious contemptible one, I've no doubt. We live, and that's a little thing—but death's littler. I dare say we live as long as we need to. Who was the old chap—Plotinus, wasn't it?—conceived the body to be a penitential mechanism for the soul? All the better if we expiate early. Gad! I must have had a quantity of things to atone for—though I'm really younger than you may think, Nell. Poor girl—poor girl!" He brightened as he drained his glass to her. "Here's to you, wherever you are. Come, be cheerful anyway. What was it struck in my mind yesterday?—a sentence from one of Arbuthnot's letters to Swift—just the meat for you—'A reasonable hope of going—a reasonable hope of going to a good place and an absolute certainty of leaving a bad one.' That's the sentiment—keep it in mind, my dear."
She was nerving herself to new appeals, half fearing she could not hold his attention. She seized on that unprecedented look of compassion.
"But, Randall, you'll let him off—let him off for me—for my sake." In her eagerness she rose and fluttered to the desk, standing before him. He whirled his chair about, and the look of commiseration had gone.
"No, no, no! You can't understand, Nell. I couldn't let him off if I wanted to. It's fate, its retribution—the sins of the father—it's scriptural, I tell you—" His eyes were gleaming again with steely implacability.