"She confessed she had been taken with you—had her little dream about you. And she hated herself for it."
Never, I thought, would I forget Vaughn Steele's eyes. It did not matter that it was dark; I saw the fixed gleam, then the leaping, shadowy light.
"Did she say that?" His voice was not quite steady. "Wonderful! Even if it only lasted a minute! She might—we might—If it wasn't for this hellish job! Russ, has it dawned on you yet, what I've got to do to Diane Sampson?"
"Yes," I replied. "Vaughn, you haven't gone sweet on her?"
What else could I make of that terrible thing in his eyes? He did not reply to that at all. I thought my arm would break in his clutch.
"You said you knew what I've got to do to Diane Sampson," he repeated hoarsely.
"Yes, you've got to ruin her happiness, if not her life."
"Why? Speak out, Russ. All this comes like a blow. There for a little I hoped you had worked out things differently from me. No hope. Ruin her life! Why?"
I could explain this strange agitation in Steele in no other way except that realization had brought keen suffering as incomprehensible as it was painful. I could not tell if it came from suddenly divined love for Diane Sampson equally with a poignant conviction that his fate was to wreck her. But I did see that he needed to speak out the brutal truth.
"Steele, old man, you'll ruin Diane Sampson, because, as arrest looks improbable to me, you'll have to kill her father."