Her patrician manner was gone. Her eyes looked their thanks at him. “That was good of you. I have been very anxious to get the facts. One rumor was that you have captured Sir Leroy. Is it true?”
It seemed to her that his look was one of grave tenderness. “No, that is not true. You remember what we said of him—of how he might die?”
“He is dead—you killed him,” she cried, all the color washed from her face.
“He is dead, but I did not kill him.”
“Tell me,” she commanded.
He told her, beginning at the moment of his meeting with the outlaws at the Dalriada dump and continuing to the last scene of the tragedy. It touched her so nearly that she could not hear him through dry-eyed.
“And he spoke of me?” She said it in a low voice, to herself rather than to him.
“It was just before his mind began to wander—almost his last conscious thought. He said that when you heard the news you would remember. What you were to remember he didn’t say. I took it you would know.”
“Yes. I was to remember that he was not all wolf to me.” She told it with a little break of tears in her voice.
“Then he told me to tell you that it was the best way out for him. He had come to the end of the road, and it would not have been possible for him to go back.” Presently Collins added gently: “If you don’t mind my saying so, I think he was right. He was content to go, quite game and steady in his easy way. If he had lived, there could have been no going back for him. It was his nature to go the limit. The tragedy is in his life, not in his death.”