“Doctor, what difference can it make to a dying man whether his little stock of strength is exhausted sooner or later?” wearily.
“Go on then; but be brief.”
“I found out too late,” continued Everard Dawn, “that Miss Lowe was different from what I thought. She had indeed conceived a mad love for me that had driven her to desperate lengths to win me. It is true that she followed me to Georgia, true that I married her, but only because of her passionate pleadings and assertions that through my wife’s jealousy her character had been ruined. I gave her the shelter of my name, but, God forgive me, I hated her as long as she lived, and could not help rejoicing when she was dead. I obtained a position as a commercial traveler, so that I could spend most of my time away from her side, so her victory was a poor one after all, for she had wrecked two lives without gaining any happiness for herself. As for the rest, I affirm now on my death-bed and on my hopes of heaven, that Gladys Lowe and I were as innocent of wrong-doing before my divorce as the purest angel. She was wicked enough to make my wife believe it, through her jealousy so easily imposed on, but she was not guilty, so help me Heaven!”
He paused, and there rose a stifled cry of bitter anguish. It came from Cinthia’s ghastly lips as the cruel truth began to dawn on her bewildered brain.
Everard Dawn looked at her pityingly, and said:
“Ah, Cinthia, you understand it all now. She was your mother. Perhaps you will not blame me now that I failed in love to you, that I forgot my duty to you in resentment at what you represented—the wicked love of a woman who wrecked my life in parting me from all that made it dear.”
A low moan came from her blanched lips and Arthur Varian left his mother’s side and approached her with leaden-weighted feet and a look as of death’s agony in his fixed blue eyes. He took her hand, and said, hollowly:
“Cinthia, you understand it all now, but you will not mind it, I know, because Fred is going to make you very happy, my dear little sister.”
No one in that room ever forgot the white agony of Cinthia Dawn’s face as she sprung to her feet, with outstretched arms, quivering all over as if a bullet had pierced her heart, pushing Arthur away as if his hand had given the mortal wound.
“Oh, God, let me die!” she shrieked, in her despair, and sunk senseless in Madame Ray’s arms.