There was a quick leap in Irene's eyes; the leap of that intuitive feminine sense of danger which so seldom errs in dealing with its own sex, and is yet so unreliable a defence from the dangers of the other. Mrs. Hardy was in the living-room. "Won't you come up to my work shop?" Irene answered without change of voice, and they ascended the stairs together.
"I draw a little," Irene was saying, talking fast. "Oh yes, I have quite commercialized my art, such as it is. I draw pictures of shoes, and shirt waists, and other women's wear which really belong to the field of a feminine artist. But I haven't lost my soul altogether. I daub in colour a little—yes, daub, that's the word. But it keeps one's soul alive. You will hardly recognize that," she said, indicating an easel, "but here is the original." She ran up the blind of the window which looked from the room out to the westward, and far over the brown shoulders of the foothills rose the Rockies, majestic, calm, imperturbable, their white summits flashing in the blaze of autumn sunshine. "No warfare there," Irene went on. "No plotting, no cruelty, no cowardice, no misunderstanding. And to think that they will stand there forever; forever, as we know time; when our city, our civilization, the very memory of our age shall have gone out. I never look at them without feeling how—how—how——"
She trembled, and her voice choked; she put out her arm to a chair. When she turned her face there were tears on it.… "Tell me,—Edith," she said.… "You know" …
"I know some things," Edith managed to say. "I know, now, that I do not know all. Dave and I are old friends—my father took a liking to him and he used often to be in our house—he made him think of our own boy that was killed and would have been just his age—and we got to know each other very well and he told me about you, long ago. And last night I found him at his rooms, almost mad, and swearing to shoot Conward. And then he told me that—that——"
"Yes? Yes? What did he tell you? I am not afraid——"
Edith turned her eyes to where the white crests of the mountains cut like a crumpled keel through a sea of infinite blue. "He told me he saw Conward here … upstairs … and Conward made a boast … and he would have shot him but you rushed upon him and begged him not to. He said you would have taken the bullet yourself rather than it should find Conward."
"Oh, oh," the girl cried, in the pain of one mortally hurt. "How could he think that? I didn't care for him—for Conward—but for Dave. I knew there had been a quarrel—I didn't know why—and I knew if Dave shot him—and he can shoot—I've seen him break six bottles out of six on the gallop—it wasn't self-defence—whatever it was he couldn't plead that—and they'd hang him, and that was all I saw, Edith, that was all I saw, and I would—yes I would rather have taken the bullet myself than that that should happen——"
"You poor girl!" said Edith. "You poor girl," and her arms found the other's neck. "You have been hurt, hurt." And then, under her breath, "More than me."
…"What has he done?"
"He talked his problems over with me, and after he had talked awhile he became more reasonable. He had already been convinced that he should offer his services to his country, in these times. And I think I persuaded him that it was better to leave vengeance where it belonged. He said he couldn't remain here, and he has already left for England. I am afraid I encouraged him to leave at once. You see, I didn't understand."