"No," said John, fiercely. "It is Scaife, Scaife!"
Warde shook his head, holding John's hand tight between his sinewy fingers. John's face appalled him. He had known, he had guessed, the strength of John's feeling for Desmond, but, he had not known the strength of John's hatred of Scaife. And Desmond had been taken—and Scaife left. The irony of it tore the soul.
"Don't speak," commanded Warde.
John closed his lips with instinctive obedience. When he opened them again his face had softened; the words fell upon the silence with a heartrending inflection of misery.
"And now I shall never know—I shall never know."
He broke down piteously. Warde let the first passion of grief spend itself; then he asked John to explain. The good fellow saw that if John could give his trouble words it would be lightened enormously. He divined what had been suppressed.
"What is it that you will never know, John?"
At that John spoke, laying bare his heart. He gave details of the never-ending struggle between Scaife and himself for the soul of his friend; gave them with a clearness of expression which proved beyond all else how his thoughts had crystallized in his mind. Warde listened, holding John's hand, gripping it with sympathy and affection. The romance of this friendship stirred him profoundly; the romance of the struggle for good and evil; a struggle of which the issues remained still in doubt; a romance which Death had cruelly left unfinished—this had poignant significance for the house-master.
"I shall never know now," John repeated, in conclusion.
"But you have faith in your friend."