“Yes,” she said, “ready to go with you, away from here, anywhere, at any time. You cannot stay here?”
There was something in her voice and face impossible to describe—a deadly apathy, an icy coldness, a stony acceptance of a hopeless situation.
For the first time in twenty-four hours the color returned to Dixon’s face. His eyes flashed, his teeth were set, as he sprang to his feet. In that instant he set his face against the power that would fling him into bottomless abysses of shame and ruin.
“I will stay here!” he said, fiercely. “I will not fly again! The worst that could happen has happened. Where should I go to escape my fate? Why should I attempt it? No! I swear to live my life here, and to live it as a man should live with God’s help, and yours, Barbara!” he implored. “Will you drive me to despair? Will you forsake me, or will you help me?”
A shiver shook the woman’s slight form, and she passed her hand across her eyes once or twice, before reaching it toward him. A piteous smile quivered across her lips, but her eyes did not seek his.
He seized her hand, and again threw himself before her.
“I am your wife, Jamie,” she said, gently. “Your wife, for better or for worse. Whatever I can do to help you, I will do.”
Then at last the eyes of the two met in a long, long gaze, and in that moment Dixon read his fate.
Everything else might, and did, come back to him—the esteem and confidence of his fellow-men, worldly success, aye, and the blessing of God upon the work to which he dedicated the best portion of his remaining years—the raising up of the fallen and unfortunate; all these things came to him in time, but one thing he forever missed—the old look of perfect, unquestioning trust in one woman’s eyes, the eyes of the woman for whose sake he had sinned.