"Yes," was the bitter interruption, "you made me those promises when I said I would be engaged to you—what have they amounted to? It would have broken his heart if it had come out then. I—I promised the Dean for you—that time—" her voice charged with emotion so she could scarcely speak—"and now—"
"But wait—wait, 'Licia," the boy suddenly drew her to him with passionate earnestness by both hands. "I give you my word of honor this time it's different. It isn't for myself—yes, it is, though—but it isn't for what you mean—not for anything you can think of. It is for a Purpose," he explained with great emphasis—"a Purpose—I can't tell you—but—"
"But you must tell me," insisted Alicia, searching his eyes tremulously.
"Can't—I can't!" he shook his head vehemently. "'Licia, darling, be good to me. I must have it. If I only had about fifty dollars! I could win it—I know—I am awfully good at poker—I can bluff the lot of 'em. But I've got to have ten to start—and I promise, word of honor, I'll never play again—word of honor, 'Licia."
It was too late now for me to betray my presence. I was contemptible in my own eyes, ashamed, yet exultant—I hardly knew what. My frame shook with a cold rage, with shame at my blindness, and yet a curious sense of vast illumination surrounded me like an atmosphere. I moved away, hardly knowing or caring whether I made any sound, and with bowed head and a tumult throbbing hot and cold within me, I walked down the slope through the still whispering woods.
What I had long fitfully suspected was how somewhat darkly apparent: In some manner Alicia was endeavoring to stand between the boy and evil, shame, disgrace, sacrificing herself deliberately, resolutely, without a word to me—because it might "break my heart!" Through an empty barren landscape, with unseeing eyes, conscious only of a welter of incoherent thoughts and emotions, as though boiling in a vacuum, I made my way homeward. It might "break my heart!"
"And did ye walk too far?" Griselda came hurriedly to the entrance hall when she heard me.
"No—no! Greatest walk of my life," I laughed absently into her face. "Feel like another man."
She scrutinized me sharply for an instant, and muttering something about a cup of cocoa and a biscuit, whisked away to the kitchen.
Dumb, distraught, I fell wearily into my chair, gazing vacantly at the rows of books, at the telephone instrument, the safe, the furniture and cushions, at all the apparatus of living about me, realizing clearly only one thing: that it is the simple basal things of life that alone tend to elude one. For years I had been clinging to them, faint but pursuing, but still they were eluding me. Still I was a groping elementary learner in life. Rage and depreciate myself as I would, I felt nevertheless that I was facing a problem momentarily beyond me, but which I urgently knew I must solve. If I had been blind, I could not continue blind. Suddenly, thought suspended as a bird sometimes hangs in the air, I seemed to be watching instinct taking command, instinct overriding thought and shame, rage and grief—instinct taking a pen and a cheque book and writing with my hand a check in Alicia's name for fifty dollars. Why was my hand doing this? A slight tremor of revulsion shook me before this trivial deed accomplished—and I made a movement as though to destroy the cheque I had written. But I did not destroy it. I sat gazing at it stupidly, as one might sit before a puzzle.