Stephen’s breath came in great noisy pants, audible both to Hugh and Latham.
Helen moved her arm gently, shaking the volume she held. Slowly, quietly, as if conscious of its own significance, a paper slipped from between the inverted pages, and fell to the floor.
“Oh, my God!” Stephen sobbed with a nasty choke. Then he swooped towards the paper. But Latham, who had been watching him again, and this time with a physician’s taut scrutiny, reached it first and secured it. Pryde fell back with a piteous laugh, maudlin, pathetic.
“Read it, I can’t,” Helen said, pointing to the paper. Latham and Hugh bent over it together.
Hugh read only the first few lines, and then hid his shamed face in his hands, and sobbed like a child. But Latham read on till he had read it all.
Helen hurried to Hugh, but Latham held out the document to her with a gesture not to be disregarded, even for a moment. She went to him, and took the paper. For an instant she shook so that the writing danced and mocked her. Then she drew herself up, and read it through, slowly and carefully—from its first word to its last. Read, she refolded it, and with an earnest look handed it back to Latham.
Slowly, quietly she turned—not to Hugh, but to Stephen. He stood near the door, trembling and cringing, his eyes fixed and staring—at something—cringing as if some terrible hand clutched or menaced him. With a cry of pain and of terror, such as the sufferers in Purgatory may shriek, he rushed from the room, sobbing and gibbering,
“Don’t touch me, Uncle Dick! Don’t touch me!”
Helen, scorn, hatred on her face, and no atom of pity, was following him; but Latham stayed her.
“I’ll go,” he said; “there is mania in his eyes. Stay with Hugh, he needs you. I’ll see to Pryde.” He thrust the confession in his pocket-book, the pocket-book in his coat. “That paper,” he told her, “will straighten out Hugh’s trouble. He’ll be free and clear to-morrow, believe me. But stay with him now; he needs you.”