“Don’t!” Hugh groaned pitifully, his head bent before her.
“Perhaps I won’t; after all, it’s not interesting unless you’re fool enough, or blind enough, to be tricked into fancying it’s the truth. But let me tell them some of the other things. This noble youth, this man sacrificed his life for his friend and bore the blame of that friend’s guilt. He is as handsome as a Viking, the very ideal of a girl’s imagination, strong and shapely and graceful. Has he a humped shoulder and a lame leg and a scarred face revealing his scarred soul? Answer me.”
Hugh flinched as though under a lash.
Pete put out his hand uncertainly; his face was drawn with pain. “Sylvie—stop. You must stop. You’re too cruel. He did lie to you, but remember, that was because he—”
The brilliant black eyes flashed back at him.
“Because he loved me, you were going to say? When you love a woman, do you try to ruin her life? Do you creep up in the dark under cover of her blindness and touch her with some dreadful, poisonous wound? You don’t know my horror of that man, Pete. Oh, he kissed—kissed me!” She shivered. “A murderer! Yes, a murderer. Oh, Ham Rutherford, if I could only make you see yourself! If I could give you my eyes when they opened, and I saw Pete’s beauty and Bella’s sweetness and the horrible ugliness of you! And then, day by day—you see, I was afraid to let you know that I had seen you. I was in terror of you, of what you might do to me. I was afraid of you all; you had all deceived me. Day by day I learned the utter distortion of you, mind, body, and soul. How could I help but—but—” She faltered and half turned to Pete, holding out her hands. Her indignation at the treachery practiced upon her, an anger that had grown in silence to unbearable heat, had spent itself in words. She was all for consolation now—for sympathy. But Pete stepped back from her. He was looking at Hugh, and his clear, young face was an open wound.
Hugh pushed himself up and slowly lifted his face. It was then that he saw Sylvie’s hands stretched out to Pete. He started—no one knew what the convulsive movement meant; but as he started—the gun tripped him. He caught it up carelessly, blindly. There was a flash—a crash. Pete leaped and bent, holding his arm. Blood spurted between his fingers, soaking his wet sleeve; and Sylvie, crying aloud, wrapped him in trembling, protective arms.
“I’m not much hurt,” he said half dazedly. “It—it was an accident. He didn’t mean it. I was looking at him. The gun went off. He didn’t shoot at me.... Hugh!”
The man was staring straight ahead of him, and now he drew his hand across his eyes, the fingers crooked as though they tore a veil.
“Now,” he said, “I do see myself just as I am. Yes, I did shoot at you. Yes, I think I meant to kill you. I must have meant to kill you. That’s the truth. For the second time I’m a murderer. Yet now, as God lives, even if I am down in the dust, I’ll lay hold of my stars. I’m going to walk out of your lives so that they can shape themselves to their own good ends. Sylvie can shape yours with you, Pete.” He hesitated a moment. “If a coward, a murderer, can say ‘God bless you,’ take that blessing!”