“Yes.”
“Call God to hear ye say ut!”
“So—help me—God.”
Soane dropped on to the bed and took his battered face and curly head between his hands.
“I’ll say no more,” he said thickly. “Nor you nor she shall know no more. An’ av ye have guessed it out, kape it locked in. I’ll say no more.... I was good to her—in me own way. But ye cud see—anny wan with half a cock-eye cud see.... I was—honest—with her mother.... She made the bargain.... I tuk me pay an’ held me tongue.... ’Tis whishkey talks, not me.... I tuk me pay an’ I kept to the bargain.... Wan year.... Then—she was dead of it—like a flower, sorr—like the rose ye pull an’ lave lyin’ in the sun.... Like that, sorr—in a year.... An’ I done me best be Dulcie.... I done me best. An’ held to the bargain.... An’ done me best be Dulcie—little Dulcie—the wee baby that had come at last—her baby—Dulcie Fane!...”
XIX
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
A single shaded lamp illuminated the studio, making the shapes of things vague where outline and colour were lost in the golden dusk. Dulcie, alone at the piano, accompanied her own voice with soft, scarcely heard harmonies, as she hummed, one after another, old melodies she had learned from the Sisters so long ago—“The Harp,” “Shandon Bells,” “The Exile,” “Shannon Water”—songs of that sort and period: