There was a pause. Langdon, with bloodless fingers, nervously broke his cigar half in two. He took another and listlessly struck a match, only to let its flame expire without using it.
"What's the trouble, my boy?" pursued Sively. "I want to befriend you if I can. I'm older than you."
"Well, I am in trouble," Langdon said, simply. Then, in a low tone, and with frequent pauses, he told all about his acquaintance with Virginia. Once started, he left out no detail, extending his confidence till it had included a humble confession even of his humiliation by Ann Boyd and the girl's bitter words of contempt a few days later. "Then I had to come away," Langdon finished, with a sigh that was a whispered groan. "I couldn't stand it. I thought the change, the life and excitement down here, would make me forget, but it's worse than ever. I'm in hell, old man—a regular hell."
Sively leaned back in his chair. There was an expression of supreme disgust about his sensitive nose and mouth, and his eyes burned with indignant, spirit-fed fires.
"Great God!" he exclaimed; "and it was that girl—that particular one—Jane Hemingway's daughter!"
"You've seen her, then?" Langdon said, in awakening surprise.
"Seen her? Great Heavens, of course, I've seen her, and, now that I know all this, her sweet, young face will never go out of my mind—never as long as life is in me."
"I don't exactly see—I don't understand—" Langdon began, but his cousin interrupted him.
"I had a talk with her one day," he said, feelingly. "I had been hunting with your gun and dogs, and stopped at her mother's house to get a drink of water. Virginia was the only one at home, and she brought it to me in the little porch. I've met thousands of women, Langdon, but her beauty, grace, intelligence, and dazzling purity affected me as I never was before. I am old enough to be her father, but do you know what I thought as I sat there and talked to her? I thought that I'd give every dollar I had for the love and faith of such a girl—to leave this rotten existence here and settle down there in the mountains to earn my living by the sweat of my brow. It was almost the only silly dream I ever had, but it was soon over. A thousand times since that day, in the midst of all this false show and glitter, my mind has gone back to that wonderful girl. She'd read books I'd never had time to open, and talked about them as freely and naturally as I would about things of everyday life. No doubt she was famished for what all women, good or bad, love—the admiration of men—and so she listened eagerly to your slick tongue. Oh, I know what you said, and exactly how you said it. You've inherited that gift, my boy, but you've inherited something—perhaps from your mother—something that your father never had in his make-up—you've inherited a capacity for remorse, self-contempt, the throes of an outraged conscience. I'm a man of the world—I don't go to church, I play cards, I race horses, I've gone all the gaits—but I know there is something in most men which turns their souls sick when they consciously commit crime. Crime!—yes, that's it—don't stop me. I used a strong word, but it must go. There are men who would ten thousand times rather shoot a strong, able-bodied man dead in his tracks than beguile a young girl to the brink of doom (of all ways) as you did—blinding her to her own danger by the holy desire to save her mother's life, pulling her as it were by her very torn and bleeding heart-strings. God!"
"Oh, don't—don't make it any worse than it is!" Langdon groaned. "What's done's done, and, if I'm down in the blackest depths of despair over it, what's the use to kick me? I'm helpless. Do you know what I actually thought of doing this morning? I actually lay in bed and planned my escape. I wanted to turn on the gas, but I knew it would never do its work in that big, airy room."