Christina stood looking at him with an infinite pity. She was not crying but her magnificent eyes swam in a sort of luminous ether and Herrick had never seen her so girlishly helpless.—"Knowing me brought him to this!"
"Don't talk like a fool, Christina!" Denny interrupted over his shoulder in his dead-and-alive voice.
"It's true. If you'd never known me, or if I'd never engaged myself to Jim—"
"Or if I'd never been born. It's just as true and just about as relevant." His absent voice died in his throat. Then, of a sudden, he turned on her with a kind of restive suspicion. "What did you say, awhile ago, about Kane's office?"
"He's sent for me to come there to-morrow at two."
"Well, whatever you begin telling him, remember there's one thing I can't put up with. And that's—Well, anything less than—the full dose." He came up to the girl and took her hand in his cold fingers. "And I implore you, Christina, whatever you do, not to set such a motion on foot, not to work up any sympathies nor bring forward any circumstances which might lead to what they call a merciful sentence. I couldn't stand it, Chris. It's the one thing I can't bear.—Oh, don't cry, don't cry! Come, my dear! Why, you surely don't want me to live—like this! With nothing to think of except—about Nancy! Well, then!" But Christina was visibly gasping for breath and, in a nature easily drawn together against a world harsh or indifferent, all the defenses against feeling began to give way. Some comfort must be found for those that insist upon caring! But what comfort?—"Ah now, Chris, dear old girl, such a brave girl—it's all right. It's bound to be. Why, it's what I want, really. Really it is. You know that. You know I've been pretty well through, all these weeks, isn't that so?—Oh, take her away, won't you?" he cried to Herrick.
But Christina had by this time begun to cry, indeed, and now she threw her arms round Denny's neck, pulled down his face and kissed him. "To leave you here!" she wept.
For a moment he stood stiff in her embrace and then he gently returned her kiss; suddenly, with a sobbing breath, he caught her by the shoulders as a man clings to something tried and dear, which he knows he may not often see again. "Poor Chris!" he said. "All right, Chris!"
The Inspector signed to the doorman who stepped up, pleasantly enough, to Denny, and at his touch Denny took the girl by her elbows and held her off.
"Come," he said, "you've got a performance to-night!"