"Vick!" she cried; "I knew you would do some—" she hesitated before his glittering eyes—"something very risky," she faltered at last.
He waved this aside impatiently.
"What will you do now?" she asked hesitantly.
"I don't know,—we shall go away," he replied vaguely; "but she is waiting, needs me. Will you help her,—help us?" he demanded, turning to the door, "or shall we have to go to-night?"
"Wait," she said, putting her hands on his arms; "you can't do that! Just think what it will mean to father and mother, to everybody…. Let me dress and take her back!" she suggested half heartedly.
"Isabelle!" he cried. "She shall never go back to that brute."
"You love her so much?"
"Enough for anything," he answered gravely, turning to the door.
In the face of his set look, his short words, all the protesting considerations on the tip of her tongue seemed futile. To a man in a mood like his they would but drive him to further folly. And admiration rose unexpectedly in her heart for the man who could hold his fate in his hands like this and unshakenly cast it on the ground. The very madness of it all awed her. She threw her arms about him, murmuring:—
"Oh, Vick—for you—it seems so horrid, so—"