"Confound you!" he muttered. "You can and you will. You've got to.
You've made your bed. Now lie on it." And he opened the letter.
"I can't tell you," wrote the girl, "how your letter touched me. Don't think I don't understand that it isn't because you love me or really want to marry me that you are asking me to do it. It is all the finer and more wonderful because you don't and couldn't, ever. You had nothing to gain—everything to lose. Yet you offered it all as if it were the most ordinary gift in the world instead of the biggest.
"Of course, I can't let you sacrifice yourself like that for me. Did you really think I would? I wouldn't let you be dragged down into my life even if you loved me which you don't. Some day you will want to marry a girl—not somebody like me—but your own kind and you can go to her clean because you never hurt me, never did me anything but good ever. You lifted me up always. But there must have been something still stronger that pulled me down. I couldn't stay up. I was never your kind though I loved you just as much as if I were. Forgive my saying it just this once. It will be the last time. This is really good-by. Thank you over and over for everything,
"Madeline."
A mist blurred Ted Holiday's eyes as he finished the letter. He was free. The black winged vulture thing which had hovered over him for days was gone. By and by he would be thankful for his deliverance but just now there was room only in his chivalrous boy's heart for one overmastering emotion, pity for the girl and her needlessly wrecked life. What a hopeless mess the whole thing was! And what could he do to help her since she would not take what he had offered in all sincerity? He must think out a way somehow.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE PEDIGREE OF PEARLS
"Where is Larry?" asked Doctor Holiday a few days later coming into the dining room at supper time. "I haven't seen him all the afternoon."
Margery dropped into her chair with a tired little sigh.
"There is a note from him at your place. I think he has gone out of town.
John told me he took him to the three ten train."