He seemed to rise and leap at once. And she ran straight into his arms. No man, no trouble, no mystery, no dishonor, no barrier—nothing could have held her back the instant she saw how the sight of her, how the sound of her voice, had transformed Neale. For one tumultuous, glorious, terrible moment she clung to his neck, blind, her heart bursting. Then she fell back with hands seeking her breast.
“I heard!” she cried. “I know nothing of Beauty Stanton’s letter.... But you didn’t shoot her. It was Larry. I saw him do it.”
“Allie!” he whispered.
At last he had realized her actual presence, the safety of her body and soul; and all that had made him strange and old and grim and sad vanished in a beautiful transfiguration.
“You know Larry did it!” implored Allie. “Tell them so.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied. “But I did worse. I—”
She saw him shaken by an agony of remorse; and that agony was communicated to her.
“Neale! she loved you?”
He bowed his head.
“Oh!” Her cry was almost mute, full of an unutterable realization of tragic fatality for her. “And you—you—”