He resumed his tremulous advance very slowly, because he was so heavily burdened by his loyalty to the beloved master and his treason to this once gentle benefactress. Casting down his eyes, he stood before her abjectly leaning on his cane. His honest, deeply lined face twitched painfully; for he could feel her scorn passing over him like a winter blast. He faltered:
"I was helpless, ma'am. I only did as he ordered. He thought it best. He believed it wouldn't leak out. We took all precautions." He told her how Lawrence Teck had taken him from the Greenwich Village house to an obscure hotel, where they had found a strange gentleman, slender, with a fatigued, nervous face, almost too fastidiously dressed to be another traveler, smoking constantly, saying nothing. This gentleman's name—it was altogether a disjointed, feverish business anyway—had never been pronounced in Parr's hearing. The stranger had seemed at once a torment and a comfort to Mr. Teck. Occasionally, when Parr entered, it was as if he had interrupted a distressing scene. Mr. Teck had then jumped up with a queer smile, knocking against the chairs as he went to look out of the window. There the strange gentleman would join him, to put his hand on his shoulder, soothe him in a low voice. Then one morning Mr. Teck's rooms were empty; and the hotel clerk handed Parr an envelope containing some banknotes and the scrawl, "Good-by. God bless you. Remember, keep quiet."
"Here it is, ma'am."
She snatched the note from him, pored over it fiercely, and thrust it into the bosom of her gown. Her lashes wearily veiled her implacable stare.
"You fool. You should have seen that he wasn't in his senses. Where is he now?"
"He should be there," Parr quavered. "By this time he might be inland."
She saw a stream of men flowing in through the jungle, a human river doomed to roll at last over some tragic brink. She clenched her hands, seemed about to rise and rush out, as she was, in pursuit. She said:
"You are going with me."
His jaw sagged. Gaping round him, taking the whole room as witness to this folly, he cried out, "Where to?" When she began to speak he sagged forward over his cane, drinking in the verification of her incredible desire. Her attitude did not change; her face remained cold; her lips hardly moved; but he was aware of a tremendous force behind the words, of something inflexible, invincible, grand—perhaps of a flame without heat that filled her empty heart with an unearthly coruscation, like a radiance thrown back from the walls of a cavern of ice.
"Do you want to die, ma'am?"