Faunce stared at him for a moment without speaking, wrung his hand nervously, and went back to the task of lighting a new cigar.
“There are two ways of taking that,” he commented, as the doctor reached the door.
“There’s only one—live and get free of it.”
Faunce laughed bitterly.
“Free of it? How? I’ll never be free of it until I give my life for his. That’s the price they’re asking!”
The doctor shook his head, but he offered no argument. He had, in fact, a vague feeling of uncertainty. Between the two, Overton and this man, which? That was it—if Overton took Faunce’s wife, which?
The doctor was unable to answer it. Instead, he went down in the elevator with his hand over the bottle in his pocket.
XXXV
Left alone, Faunce moved restlessly about the room, still smoking. He had almost completed the business that had occupied him before the doctor’s visit. Everything was, in fact, in good order; the ship would sail soon, and, in spite of a certain veiled objection on the part of the promoters of the enterprise, there was no real opposition to Faunce as the leader.
The greatest difficulty was in his own mind. At first he had longed for it as a chance to vindicate himself, to assure himself that he was not wholly a coward, that he could earn the honors he had worn before Overton’s return. He had felt the lure of those frozen solitudes almost as keenly as Overton himself. But now it was only one more shackle to bind his obligations to the man who had survived in spite of his cowardly desertion. He was aware of the feeling of superiority that seemed to emanate from Overton’s personality with the sure touch of pride and conscious victory; and the obligation had become intolerable.