If, after all, Bethune were right? What then...?
He shrank from the thought. Jill to suffer because of him!—Little Jill ... the child he loved....
"Hardly a child!" Bethune had said. On went the wheels, merciless.
"Jill's—not the girl—to love—twice..."
McTaggart remembered suddenly how she had looked on his return when Roddy had played his innocent trick. He could see her sway and clutch the chair.
"Peter!" He heard again the note, strange and emotional in her voice.
And then at the Fair, two years ago, her face when he offered his tawdry gift—the double heart—and the way she had left him, driving home in front with Bethune.
Had he been blind? Did she care?
If so—his face was white and grave—the only decent thing to do was to go away out of her life.
And at the thought he stopped aghast, his whole world upside down.