His thoughts were all in a welter of miserable confusion. He knew that this explained many things he would have held questionable had not his infatuation forbidden him to consider them at all, lest he be disloyal to this woman whom he adored; but in the anguish of that moment he could entertain but one thought, and that possessed him altogether—that she must somehow be saved from the evil she contemplated….
But while he hesitated, she became sensitive to his presence; though he had made no sound since her entrance, though he had not even stirred, somehow she divined that he—someone—was there in the recess of the window, watching her.
In the act of opening the safe—using the memorandum of its combination which he had jotted down in her presence—he saw her pause, freeze to a pose of attention, then turn to stare directly at the portière that hid him. And for an eternal second she remained kneeling there, so still that she seemed not even to breathe, her gaze fixed and level, waiting for some sound, some sign, some tremor of the curtain's folds, to confirm her suspicion.
When at length she rose it was in one swift, alert movement. And as she paused with her slight shoulders squared and her head thrown back defiantly, challengingly, as one without will of his own but drawn irresistibly by her gaze, he stepped out into the room.
And since he was no more the Lone Wolf, but now a simple man in agony, with no thought for their circumstances—for the fact that they were both house-breakers and that the slightest sound might raise a hue-and-cry upon them—he took one faltering step toward her, stopped, lifted a hand in a gesture of appeal, and stammered:
"Lucy—you——"
His voice broke and failed.
She didn't answer, more than by recoiling as though he had offered to strike her, until the table stopped her, and she leaned back as if glad of its support.
"Oh!" she cried, trembling—"why_—why_ did you do it?"
He might have answered her in kind, but self-justification passed his power. He couldn't say, "Because this evening you made me lose faith in everything, and I thought to forget you by going to the devil the quickest way I knew—this way!"—though that was true. He couldn't say: "Because, a thief from boyhood, habit proved too strong for me, and I couldn't withstand temptation!"—for that was untrue. He could only hang his head and mumble the wretched confession: "I don't know."