“They don’t know much of it; I’ve thought of that. I took some measures, too, as soon as—as I knew.”
“That he’d married Diane?”
Overton assented without looking up.
“It’s strange to me—strange and perplexing,” Dr. Gerry remarked thoughtfully. “I knew when I first saw him that he had something on his mind. Then I discovered that he tramped all night—some of the boys thought he was a spook! He was taking chloral to make him sleep. I guess he’s taking it still. One night he came in here and told me.”
Overton took up another cigar and lit it mechanically, without seeming to be aware of what he did.
“I hated him for it at first. I kept seeing him go off through the snow with the sledge and the dogs; but afterward—I couldn’t blame him altogether. It was a question of being willing to die with me, I suppose, and I had no right to ask it. Yet, at the time, numb as I was, it amazed me, for I had thought he was fond of me.”
“He was. It was one of those curious cases where a man is seized with panic. It may be as much physical as moral. Practically speaking, he had lost his mind. He was of no more use than a frightened child. When he first told me, I thought it was one of the most cowardly things I’d ever heard of; but he’s suffered for it—he’s suffered the tortures of the damned!”
Overton was silent. He did not say he pitied Faunce. In fact, he was grimly recalling that terrific moment when he had been abandoned to die. Like Faunce, he visioned the polar wastes, and, unlike Faunce, he felt the drowsy approach of a frozen death again steal over him.
“I suppose there’s no reason,” he said, hesitating, “why I shouldn’t go to see Judge Herford?”
“You’re the best judge of that.”