"And you came to cheer me—to tell me you believe in me?"
Something far deeper than mere gratitude shone in his eyes, and was reflected in the agitated countenance of the girl.
"I came to tell you that I broke my engagement to Lester Ward," she said in quivering voice.
Cautiously Britz peered at the couple through the iron grating of his cell. He noted the tremor which passed down Beard's form and the furtive caress which he bestowed on the visitor's hand. At the same time the girl lifted her veil, disclosing a finely molded face of flawless features, with a skin of exquisite paleness, and flashing brown eyes shaded by long, dark lashes. As she stood with fingers encircling the bars that interposed between her and Beard, her beautiful face took on a purposeful aspect, as of one suddenly possessed of a new and consuming interest in life.
The news which she had brought the prisoner cheered him perceptibly. But he regarded her as if even now he found it difficult to credit her with the courage she must have displayed in discarding the man whom she had promised to wed.
"How did it happen?" inquired Beard in a voice that betrayed his bewildered state of mind.
"You must have known, your instinct must have told you that I accepted him because of father's urging," she said. "Now that you are in trouble I don't fear to tell you that I wanted you all the time. When I read of your arrest I wanted to fly to you, to be near you, to sustain you. This morning I told father of my intention to break the engagement. And, do you know, he assented at once. But he went into a rage when I told him I was coming here, although he seemed perfectly pleased to have me break with Lester."
A person of duller intellect than Britz, from overhearing the conversation between Beard and the girl, would have discerned the romance in the lives of the couple. Had they revealed it in its most intimate detail, they could not have conveyed a better understanding of it than through the words uttered in this murky prison corridor. It was plain to Britz that Beard and Ward had been suitors for the girl's hand; that Ward's suit was successful through the favor which he found in the eyes of the girl's father. But now, when the man with whom she really was in love was in desperate straits, that love could no longer be diverted from its true channel, and, like an irresistible current that sweeps everything before it, it had carried her to the side of her endangered lover.
Materialists may find it difficult to distinguish between love and passion—may deny to their hearts' content the existence of any line of demarcation between them. But the true lover has no doubt on the subject. Love distinguishes itself from passion, through sacrifice. Passion is invariably selfish. Love never is.
Britz, recognizing instinctively the genuineness of the woman's love, passed over its ennobling aspect, to find therein a potent influence for the solution of the crime with which he was engaged. The girl had unconsciously revealed herself to him as a means to an end—that end being the discovery and punishment of the murderer of Herbert Whitmore.