“You will?” he asked incredulously, and struggled to grasp the meaning of her startling suggestion.
“I will if it is God’s will.... He will tell me.... Oh, I have great faith, boy. He will tell me in a very simple way. I offer all my life to you as I meant to do when you came here that night a year ago, and I got you on your feet and you promised to try. And you have tried, boy; I’m proud of the way you have tried!... I promised God then that if He willed it I would take you and save your soul.... He will tell me; it will be when you say again that you want me ... that you still want me to do it.”
“When I say I——” he began, but found no need to finish.
Walter saw all too clearly what she meant. She nodded, but did not remove her hands from her face. She seemed to be waiting tremulously for the verdict from on high.
If he still insisted that he wanted her, if his mind was blind to the sacrifice, then he would indeed need her; if he thought enough of her not to drag her down with him, then there was the spark of a man in him, and he would not need her. And as he spoke, so would God speak.
For an irresolute moment or two Walter stood watching her; then he swore a savage sort of oath and cried out that he would make her keep her word; and then he fled out of the house, as if fearful of himself. But the incoherencies had gone from his speech. He was a beaten man, but, Phœbe exulted as she dabbed at her eyes, he was a man! It was a bitter hour for him, but he was struggling now, not as a weakling, petulant and unreasonable, but as a man battling with grief. So in spite of her tears there was a smile on her face as she looked after him. She listened, and knew his step on the uneven planks of the dock. Then she heard the “plump” of his plunge into the tender, which gave her a horrid second of terror until the powerful strokes of oars creaking fainter and fainter told her that he was rowing out into the calm Lake.
She went to the window and watched his black silhouette. The moon was just beginning to mount.
“It’s the Lake that we go to in our little troubles,” she murmured. “The dear old mother of a Lake!”
CHAPTER XXIV
PROUD MISS PIDDIWIT
When the “party” broke up Jerry deliberately walked up the hill with Richard, and suggested, in the tone of the perfect hostess, that as this would be their last evening together for some time they might draw up chairs and sit under the spell of “Da” and “Waga.”