Did he know? He had dreamed so often of an impossible future in which she might be his, of long days spent with her, and hours of contentment, of the touch of her lips on his, and the sound of her footsteps pacing beside him for the rest of his life and hers; but 260 they had only been dreams—dreams that could never come true.
He sought desperately in his mind for words with which to answer her appeal, but what poor things were mere words in comparison with his longing to take her in his arms and kiss the smiles back to her tremulous lips.
And she said again desperately, fighting for her ground inch by inch:
"Chris never loved me. It was only the money he wanted . . . oh, you know it was!"
It was hard to find a reply to such an unanswerable argument.
"Years ago, before I knew you, Marie," Feathers said presently, "Chris saved me from what might have been lifelong disgrace. He was the best friend a man ever had. What would you think of me if I paid my debt to him by taking his wife? Oh, my dear, think what it would mean . . ."
She thought she heard a note of yielding in his voice, and she reached out a trembling hand and put it into his.
"If you go away I shall have nobody left. Oh, I can't bear you to go away!"
He kept the little hand in his very gently. He went on talking to her as if she had been a child. He tried to show her the tragic impossibility of it all—the hopelessness. He spoke to her of the past, of the days when she and Chris has been children together; he pleaded for his friend as eloquently as he might have pleaded for himself, and at last he stopped, struck to the heart by her silence.
She drew her hand away.