"It's nearing the end!" he said solemnly; "there are other changes and chances perhaps, but the end is in sight. The whole thing was unalterable from the beginning; it makes little difference what we do now. And it's you—it's you that have brought it all about. We are bound together by ties not of earthly making."
He laughed softly, turned and placed his hand on Archie's shoulder.
"You are beginning to believe at last?"
"I don't know what to believe," Archie answered slowly. "There's something uncanny in all this. Just how much do you understand of it?"
"Precious little! Your Isabel and my Ruth are friends; quite intimate friends indeed. In college together, I'd have you know, but I never knew it till now. That's news to you, isn't it?"
"Most astonishing news!"
"And this is the very Isabel who shattered your equanimity; told you to shoot up the world and then treated you like a pick-pocket the next time you met! But as old William said 'Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.'"
"Don't jump at conclusions! I was just bragging when I gave you the idea that there was anything between us. The love's all on my side! She twitted me about my worthlessness that night in Washington; bade me tear down the heavens. And it oddly happened that from that hour I have never been a free man; I have done things I believed myself incapable of doing."
"You did them rather cheerfully, I must say! But on the whole, nothing very naughty. And I'll prepare you a little for what I prefer you should hear from Isabel—I got it from Ruth—you're not quite finished yet with that pistol shot in the Congdon house. It seems to be echoing round the world!"