The man turned away. His slim shoulders lifted with seeming indifference.
“Pete Clancy and Nick Devereux—your two boys. But I don’t know yet. I’m not sure.”
Suddenly Kate moved toward him. The coldness had passed out of her manner. Her eyes had softened, and a smile, a tender smile, shone in their depths. She held out her two hands.
“Charlie, boy,” she said, “you needn’t fear for treachery for to-morrow. Leave Pete and Nick to me. I can deal with them. I promise you Fyles will gain nothing in the game he’s playing, through them. Now, you must go. Give up all thought of me. We cannot help things. We can never be anything to each other, more than we are now, so why endure the pain and misery of a hope than can never be fulfilled. As long as I live I shall pray for your welfare. So long as I can I shall strive for it. It is for you to be strong. You must set your heart upon living down this old past, and—forgetting me. I am not worth the love you give me. Indeed—indeed I am not.”
But her outstretched hands were ignored. Charlie made a slight, impatient movement, and turned toward the door. Finally he looked back, and, for a moment, his gaze encountered the appeal in Kate’s eyes. Then he passed on swiftly as though he could not endure the sight of all that which he knew to be slipping from beyond his reach.
One hand reached the door handle, then he hunched his shoulders obstinately.
“I give up nothing, Kate. Nothing,” he said doggedly. “I love you, and I shall go on loving you to—the end.”
It was late when Kate returned to her home. The house was in darkness, and the moon brought it out in silvery, frigid relief. Thrusting the front door open, she paused for a moment upon the threshold. She might have been listening; she might merely have been thinking. Finally she sat down and removed her shoes and gently tip-toed to her sister’s room.
Helen’s door was ajar, and she pushed it open and looked in. The moonlight was shining across her sister’s fair features, and the mass of loose fair hair which framed them. She was sound asleep in that wonderful dreamless land of rest, far from the turbulent little world in which her waking hours were spent.