Never shall I forget the sight revealed to my eyes as the light from the dressing-room dispelled slightly the gloom of that interior.
In the center of the narrow room kneeled a young girl, with her dark hair streaming about her shoulders and her pale face raised to heaven as she pressed the barrel of an automatic to her heart. In that attitude of utter renunciation, she was very beautiful, so beautiful that she took away our breath and held us motionless.
That at least was her effect upon Jones and myself, but McKelvie was less susceptible, or perhaps his quick eyes noted a motion that we did not observe. At any rate, he sprang forward and knocked up the pistol. There was a sharp report, and the girl fell forward into his arms in a dead faint.
He carried her into Darwin's bedroom and laid her on the bed. While he worked over her, I descended to the kitchen where Mason was watching the broth McKelvie had ordered him to make.
When I returned she was sitting up, and as she sipped the broth I looked at her again and felt my pulses stirring as I looked into her face. I'm not much of a hand at describing beauty in a woman, and perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay her is to say that though she had suffered and her lustrous black eyes were dull and her face wan and pale, she was beautiful still, and her voice held all the haunting quality of the South in its depths as she told us her story, a story so unusual that it was almost unbelievable.
CHAPTER XXXV
A STRANGE ACCOUNT
"I come of a race whose blood is hot and easily provoked," she began in a low voice, "and who consider honor a thing to be cherished and guarded. A year ago I came to New York to study for the stage, which had always been my ambition, and before I left New Orleans my dear old teacher told me to beware of the pitfalls of that great metropolis, which I intended to make my home. In the beginning I followed his advice and was wary, receiving no visitors, although I made many acquaintances. But when one is alone one becomes lonely, and so I permitted two young men to call upon me, since I knew that both of them came from good families. I was playing with fire without realizing it, for the elder of the two, and he was hardly more than a boy, proposed to me when I had known him a month. I did not love him, and I told him so. In a burst of jealousy he accused me of being in love with his rival, and declared that since I would not marry him he cared not what became of him. He would go straight to the devil, he said. I tried to be kind and to reason with him, but he was spoiled and wanted only his own way, so I told him he must not try to see me again, and he never did, for six months ago he left the city for good."
As she paused in her recital, I realized with a shock that she was speaking of Dick Trenton. It was she who had given him the sachet then, and it was she who had been responsible, through the fault of that beauty with which nature had endowed her, for the attitude of devil-may-care, which had made the boy an easy prey to Darwin's fascinations. What a mixed up mess life really was!