He remembered that he had given his revolver to Irene. And suddenly she sat with him again at the tea table.… Where was he? Yes, he had given his revolver to Irene. Well, there was another in his rooms. First to kill the wolf.
In the hallway of the block in which he had his bachelor apartments Dave almost collided with a woman. He drew back, and the light fell on his face, but hers was in the shadow. And then he heard her voice. "Oh, Dave, I'm so glad—why, what has happened?" The last words ran into a little treble of pain as she noted his haggard face; he had not eaten for twenty-four hours, nor slept for thirty-six.
"You—Edith," he managed to say. "Whatever——"
She came toward him and placed her hands on his. "I've been here a hundred times—ever since morning—ever since Bert Morrison called up to say you had disappeared—that there was some mystery. There isn't, is there, Dave? You're all right, Dave, aren't you, Dave?"
"I guess I'm all right," he managed to answer, "but I got a job on—an important job on. I must get it done. There is not time——"
But her woman's intuition had gone far below his idle words. "There is something wrong, Dave," she said. "You never looked like this before. Tell me what it is. Tell me, Dave; not that I want to know, for knowing's sake, but just that I—perhaps I—can help."
Dave was silent for a moment, watching her. She had changed her position, and he could see her face. Suddenly it occurred to him that Edith Duncan was beautiful. If she had not quite the fine features of Irene, she had a certain softness of expression, a certain mellowness, even tenderness, of lip and eye; a certain womanly delicacy——
"Edith," he said, "you're white. Why is it that the woman a man loves will fail him, and the woman he only likes—stays true?"
"Oh!" she cried, and he could not guess the depths from which her cry was wrung.… "I should not have asked you, Dave," she said. "I'm sorry."
They stood a moment, neither wishing to move away. "You said you had something must be done at once," she reminded him at length.