Eve, looking up at him, caught his hand. “Why? Why?” she questioned. Her tone was low and scared.
Without replying, he drew her imperatively towards the stairs. “Go very softly,” he commanded. “No one must see you here.”
In the first moment she obeyed him instinctively; then, reaching the head of the stairs, she stopped. With one hand still clasping his, the other clinging nervously to the banister, she refused to descend. “John,” she whispered, “I'm not a child. What is it? What has happened? I must know.”
For a moment Loder looked at her uncertainly; then, reading the expression in her eyes, he yielded to her demand.
“He's dead,” he said, in a very low voice. “Chilcote is dead.”
XXXIV
To fully appreciate a great announcement we must have time at our disposal. At the moment of Loder's disclosure time was denied to Eve; for scarcely had the words left his lips before the thought that dominated him asserted its prior claim. Blind to the incredulity in her eyes, he drew her swiftly forward, and—half impelling, half supporting her—forced her to descend the stairs.
Never in after-life could he obliterate the remembrance of that descent. Fear, such as he could never experience in his own concerns, possessed him. One desire overrode all others—the desire that Eve's reputation, which he himself had so nearly imperilled, should remain unimperilled. In the shadow of that urgent duty, the despair of the past hours, the appalling fact so lately realized, the future with its possible trials, became dark to his imagination. In his new victory over self, the question of her protection predominated.
Moving under this compulsion, he guided her hastily and silently down the deserted stairs, drawing a breath of deep relief as, one after another, the landings were successively passed; and still actuated by the suppressed need of haste, he passed through the door-way that they had entered under such different conditions only a few minutes before.