“Don’t ask me!” she sobbed. “Don’t ask me, Claude!”
“Look here, old chap,” exclaimed Teddy, who was quite as mystified as myself. “I’ll come back later on. That Miss Lethmere is safe is, after all, the one great consolation.”
And, rising, my friend discreetly left the room.
When he had gone I fell upon my knees before my rediscovered love and, taking her cold hands in mine, covered them with hot, fervent kisses, saying:
“Never mind, darling. You are safe again—and with me!”
All my efforts to calm her, however, proved unavailing, for she still sobbed bitterly—the reaction, no doubt, of finding herself again beside me. With women, in circumstances of great strain, it is the feminine privilege to relieve themselves by emotion.
“Speak!” I urged of her. “Tell me where you’ve been, darling?”
But she only shook her head and, still convulsed by sobs, sat there inert and heedless of all about her.
As I knelt in silence, the quiet of my room remained unbroken save for the low ticking of the clock, and the soft sobs of the woman I so dearly loved.
Tenderly I took my own handkerchief and wiped those tears from her white, hard-set face. Then, for the first time, I saw that her left eyebrow showed a dark red scar. It had not been there on the last occasion when we had been together.