Читать книгу The Just and the Unjust - Vaughan Kester - Страница 7

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John North occupied the front rooms on the first floor of the three-story brick structure that stood at the corner of Main Street and the Square. The only other tenant on the floor with him was Andy Gilmore, who had apartments at the back of the building. Until quite recently Mr. North and Mr. Gilmore had been friends and boon companions, but of late North had rather avoided this neighbor of his.

Mount Hope said that North had parted with the major portion of his small fortune to Gilmore. Mount Hope also said and believed, and with most excellent justification for so doing, that North was a fool—a truth he had told himself so many times within the last month that it had become the utter weariness of iteration.

He was a muscular young fellow of twenty-six, with a handsome face, and, when he chose, a kindly charming manner. He had been—and he was fully aware of this—as idle and as worthless as any young fellow could possibly be; he was even aware that the worst Mount Hope said of him was much better than he deserved. In those hours that were such a new experience to him, when he denied himself other companionship than his own accusing conscience; when the contemplation of the naked shape of his folly absorbed him to the exclusion of all else, he would sit before his fire with the poker clutched in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees, poking between the bars of the grate, poking moodily, while under his breath he cursed the weakness that had made him what he was.

With his hair in disorder on his handsome shapely head, he would sit thus hours together, not wholly insensible to a certain grim sense of humor, since in all his schemes of life he had made no provision for the very thing that had happened. He wondered mightily what a fellow could do with his last thousand dollars, especially when a fellow chanced to be in love and meditated nothing less than marriage; for North's day-dream, coming like the sun through a rift in the clouds to light up the somberness of his solitary musings, was all of love and Elizabeth Herbert. He wondered what she had heard of him—little that was good, he told himself, and probably much that was to his discredit. Yet as he sat there he was slowly shaping plans for the future. One point was clear: he must leave Mount Hope, where he had run his course, where he was involved and committed in ways he could not bear to think of. To go meant that he would be forsaking much that was evil; a situation from which he could not extricate himself otherwise. It also meant that he would be leaving Elizabeth Herbert; but perhaps she had not even guessed his secret, for he had not spoken of love; or perhaps having divined it, she cared nothing for him. Even so, his regeneration seemed in itself a thing worth while. What he was to do, how make a place for himself, he had scarcely considered; but his inheritance was wasted, and of the comfortable thousands that had come to him, next to nothing remained.

In the intervals between his musings Mr. North got together such of his personal belongings as he deemed worth the removal; he was surprised to find how few were the things he really valued. On the grounds of a chastened taste in such matters he threw aside most of his clothes; he told himself that he did not care to be judged by such mere externals as the shade of a tie or the color of a pair of hose. Under his hands—for the spirit of reform was strong upon him—his rooms took on a sober appearance. He amused himself by making sundry penitential offerings to the flames; numerous evidences of his unrighteous bachelorhood disappearing from walls and book-shelves. Coincident with this he owned to a feeling of intense satisfaction. What remained he would have his friend Marshall Langham sell after he was gone, his finances having suddenly become of paramount importance.

But the days passed, and though he was not able to bring himself to leave Mount Hope, his purpose in its final aspect underwent no change. He lived to himself, and his old haunts and his old friends saw nothing of him. Evelyn Langham, whom he had known before she married his friend Marshall, was fortunately absent from town. Her letters to him remained unanswered; the last one he had burned unread. He was sick of the devious crooked paths he had trodden; he might not be just the stuff of which saints are made, but there was the hope in his heart of better things than he had yet known.

At about the time Mr. Shrimplin was attacking his Thanksgiving turkey, North, from his window, watched the leaden clouds that overhung the housetops. From the frozen dirt of the unpaved streets the keen wind whipped up scanty dust clouds, mingling them with sudden flurries of fine snow. Save for the passing of an occasional pedestrian who breasted the gale with lowered head, the Square was deserted. Staring down on it, North drummed idly on the window-pane. What an unspeakable fool he had been, and what a price his folly was costing him! As he stood there, heavy-hearted and bitter in spirit, he saw Marshall Langham crossing the Square in the direction of his office. He watched his friend's wind-driven progress for a moment, then slipped into his overcoat and, snatching up his hat, hurried from the room.

Langham, with Moxlow, his law partner, occupied two handsomely furnished rooms on the first floor, of the one building in Mount Hope that was distinctly an office building, since its sky-scraping five stories were reached by an elevator. Here North found Langham—a man only three or four years older than himself, tall, broad-shouldered, with an oratorical air of distinction and a manner that proclaimed him the leading young lawyer at the local bar.

He greeted North cordially, and the latter observed that his friend's face was unusually flushed, and that beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead, which he frequently wiped with a large linen handkerchief.

"What have you been doing with yourself, Jack?" he demanded, sliding his chair back from the desk at which he was seated. "I haven't had a glimpse of you in days."

"I have been keeping rather quiet."

"What's the matter? Liver out of whack?" Langham smiled complacently.

"Worse than that!" North rejoined moodily.

"That's saying a good deal? What is it, Jack?"

But North was not inclined to lay bare his heart; he doubted if Langham could be made to comprehend any part of his suffering.

"I am getting down to my last dollar, Marsh. I don't know where the money went, but it's gone," he finally said.

Langham nodded.

"You have certainly had your little time, Jack, and it's been a perfectly good little time, too! What are you going to do when you are cleaned out?"

"That's part of the puzzle, Marsh, that's the very hell and all of it."

"Well, you have had your fun—lots of it!" said Langham, swabbing his face.

North noticed the embroidered initial in the corner of the handkerchief.

"Fun! Was it fun?" he demanded with sudden heat.

"You took it for fun. Personally I think it was a pretty fair imitation."

"Yes, I took it for fun, or mistook it; that's the pity of it! I can forgive myself for almost everything but having been a fool!"

"That's always a hard dose to swallow," agreed Langham. He was willing to enter into his friend's mood.

"Have you ever tried to swallow it?" asked North.

"I can't say I have. Some of us haven't any business with a conscience—our blood's too red. I've made up my mind that, while I may be a man of moral impulses I am also a creature of purest accident. It's the same with you, Jack. You are a pretty decent fellow down under the skin; there's still the divine spark in you, though perhaps it doesn't burn bright enough to warm the premises. But it's there, like a shaft of light from a gem, a gem in the rough—though I believe I'm mixing my metaphors."

"Why don't you say a pearl in the mire?"

"But that doesn't really take from your pearlship, though it may dim your luster. No, Jack, the accidents have been to your morals instead of your arms and legs. That's how I explain it in my own case, and it's saved me many a bad quarter of an hour with myself. I know I'd be on crutches if the vicissitudes of which I have been the victim could be given physical expression."

"Marsh," said North soberly, "I am going away."

"You are going to do what, Jack?" demanded the lawyer.

"I am going to leave Mount Hope. I am going West for a bit, and after I am gone I want you to sell the stuff in my rooms for me; have an auction and get rid of every stick of the fool truck!"

"Why, what's wrong? Going away—when?"

"At once, to-morrow—to-night maybe. I don't know quite when, but very soon. I want you to get rid of all my stuff, do you understand? Before long I'll write you my address and you can send me whatever it brings. I expect I'll need the money—"

"Why, you're crazy, man!" cried Langham.

North moved impatiently. He had not come to discuss the merit of his plans.

"On the contrary I am having my first gleam of reason," he said briefly.

"Of course you know best, Jack," acquiesced Langham after a moment's silence.

"You'll do what I ask of you, Marsh?"

"Oh, hang it, yes." He hesitated for an instant and then said 'frankly. "You know I'm rather in your debt; I don't suppose five hundred dollars would square what I have had from you first and last."

"I hope you won't mention it! Whenever it is quite convenient, that will be soon enough."

"Thank you, Jack!" said Langham gratefully. "The fact is the pickings here are pretty small."

Again the lawyer mopped his brow and again North moved impatiently.

"Don't say another word about it, Marsh," he repeated. "McBride has agreed to take the last of my gas bonds off my hands; that will get me away from here."

"How many have you left?" asked Langham curiously.

"Ten," said North.

Langham whistled.

"Do you mean to tell me you are down to that? Why, you told me once you held a hundred!"

"So I did once, but it costs money to be the kind of fool I've been! said North.

"Well, I suppose you are doing the sensible thing in getting out of this. Have you any notion where you are going or what you'll do?"

North shook his head.

"Oh, you'll get into something!" the lawyer encouraged. "When shall you see McBride?"

"This afternoon. Why?"

"I was going to say that I was just there with Atkinson. He and McBride have been in a timber speculation, and Atkinson handed over three thousand dollars in cash to the old man. I suppose he has banked it in some heap of scrap-iron on the premises!" said Langham laughing.

"I think I shall go there now," resolved North. While he was speaking he had moved to the door leading into the hail, and had opened it.

"Hold on, John!" said Langham, detaining him. "Evelyn is home. She came quite unexpectedly to-day; you won't leave town without getting up to the house to see her?"

"I think I shall," replied North hastily. "I much prefer not to say good-by."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Langham.

"No, Marsh, I don't intend to say good-by to any one!" North quietly turned back into the room.

"I had intended having you up to the house to-night for a blow-out," urged Langham, but North shook his head. "You and Gilmore, Jack; and by the way, this puts me in a nice hole! I have already asked Gilmore, and he's coming. Now, how the devil am to get out of it? I can't spring him alone on the family circle, and I don't want to hurt his feelings!"

"Call it off, Marsh; say I couldn't come; that's a good enough excuse to give Gilmore. Why, that fellow's a common card-sharp, you can't ask Evelyn to meet him!"

A slight noise in the hall caused both men to glance toward the door, where they saw just beyond the threshold the swarthy-faced Gilmore.

There was a brief embarrassed silence, and then North nodded to the new-comer, but the salutation was not returned.

"Well, good-by, Marsh!" he said, and turned to the door. As he brushed past the gambler their eyes met for an instant, and in that instant Gilmore's face turned livid with rage.

"I'll fix you for that, so help me God, I will!" he said, but North made no answer. He passed down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the street.

McBride's was directly opposite on the corner of High Street and the Square; a mean two-story structure of frame, across the shabby front of which hung a shabby creaking sign bearing witness that within might be found: "Archibald McBride, Hardware and Cutlery, Implements and Bar Iron." McBride had kept store on that corner time out of mind.

He was an austere unapproachable old man, having no relatives of whom any one knew; with few friends and fewer intimates; a rich man, according to the Mount Hope standard, and a miser according to the Mount Hope gossip, with the miser's traditional suspicion of banks. It was rumored that he had hidden away vast sums of money in his dingy store, or in the closely-shuttered rooms above, where the odds and ends of the merchandise in which he dealt had accumulated in rusty and neglected heaps.

The old man wore an air of mystery, and this air of mystery extended to his place of business. It was dark and dirty and ill-kept. On the brightest summer day the sunlight stole vaguely in through grimy cobwebbed windows. The dust of years had settled deep on unused shelves and, in abandoned corners, and whole days were said to pass when no one but the ancient merchant himself entered the building. Yet in spite of the trade that had gone elsewhere he had grown steadily richer year by year.

When North entered the store he found McBride busy with his books in his small back office, a lean black cat asleep on the desk at his elbow.

"Good afternoon, John!" said the old merchant as he turned from his high desk, removing as he did so a pair of heavy steel-rimmed spectacles, that dominated a high-bridged nose which in turn dominated a wrinkled and angular face.

"I thought I should find you here!" said North.

"You'll always find me here of a week-day," and he gave the young fellow the fleeting suggestion of a smile. He had a liking for North, whose father, years before, had been one of the few friends he had made in Mount Hope.

The Norths had been among the town's earliest settlers, John's grandfather having taken his place among the pioneers when Mount Hope had little but its name to warrant its place on the map. At his death Stephen, his only son, assumed the family headship, married, toiled, thrived and finished his course following his wife to the old burying-ground after a few lonely heart-breaking months, and leaving John without kin, near or far, but with a good name and fair riches.

"I have brought you those gas bonds, Mr. McBride," said North, going at once to the purpose of his visit.

The old merchant nodded understandingly.

"I hope you can arrange to let me have the money for them to-day," continued North.

"I think I can manage it, John. Atkinson and Judge Langham's boy, Marsh, were just here and left a bit of cash. Maybe I can make up the sum." While he was speaking, he had gone to the safe which stood open in one corner of the small office.

In a moment he returned to the desk with a roll of bills in his hands which he counted lovingly, placing them, one by one, in a neat pile before him.

"You're still in the humor to go away?" he asked, when he had finished counting the money.

"Never more so!" said North briefly.

"What do you think of young Langham, John? Will he ever be as sharp a lawyer as the judge?"

"He's counted very brilliant," evaded North.

He rather dreaded the old merchant when his love of gossip got the better of his usual reserve.

"I hadn't seen the fellow in months to speak to until to-day. He's a clever talker and has a taking way with him, but if the half I hear is true, he's going the devil's own gait. He's a pretty good friend to Andy Gilmore, ain't he—that horse-racing, card-playing neighbor of yours?" He pushed the bills toward North. "Run them over, John, and see if I have made any mistake." He slipped off his glasses again and fell to polishing them with his handkerchief. "It's all right, John?" he asked at length.

"Yes, quite right, thank you." And North produced the bonds from an inner pocket of his coat and handed them to McBride.

"So you are going to get out of this place, John? You're going West, you say. What will you do there?" asked the old merchant as he carefully examined the bonds.

"I don't know yet."

"I'm trusting you're through with your folly, John; that your crop of wild oats is in the ground. You've made a grand sowing!"

"I have," answered North, laughing in spite of himself.

"You'll be empty-handed I'm thinking, but for the money you take from here."'

"Very nearly so."

"How much have you gone through with, John, do you mind rightly?"

"Fifteen or twenty thousand dollars."

"A nice bit of money!" He shook his head and chuckled dryly. "It's enough to make your father turn in his grave. He's said to me many a time when he was a bit close in his dealings with me, 'I'm, saving for my boy, Archie.' Eh? But it ain't always three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves; you've made a short cut of it! But you're going to do the wise thing, John; you've been a fool here, now go away and be a man! Let all devilishness alone and work hard; that's the antidote for idleness, and it's overmuch of idleness that's been your ruin."

"I imagine it is," said North cheerfully.

"You'll be making a clever man out of yourself, John," McBride continued graciously. "Not a flash in the pan like your friend Marshall Langham yonder. It's drink will do for him the same as it did for his grandfather, it's in the blood; but that was before your time."

"I've heard of him; a remarkably able lawyer, wasn't he?"

"Pooh! You'll hear a plenty of nonsense talked, and by very sensible people, too, about most drunken fools! He was a spender and a profligate, was old Marshall Langham; a tavern loafer, but a man of parts. Yes, he had a bit of a brain, when he was sober and of a mind to use it."

One would scarcely have supposed that Archibald McBride, silent, taciturn, money-loving, possessed the taste for scandal that North knew he did possess. The old merchant continued garrulously.

"They are a bad lot, John, those Langhams, but it took the smartest one of the whole tribe to get the better of me. I never told you that before, did I? It was old Marshall himself, and he flattered me into loaning him a matter of a hundred dollars once; I guess I have his note somewhere yet. But I swore then I'd have no more dealings with any of them, and I'm likely to keep my word as long as I keep my senses. It's the little things that prick the skin; that make a man bitter. I suppose the judge's boy has had his hand in your pocket? He looks like a man who'd be free enough with another's purse."

But North shook his head.

"No, no, I have only myself to blame," he said.

"What do you hear of his wife? How's the marriage turning out?" and he shot the young fellow a shrewd questioning glance.

"I know nothing about it," replied North, coloring slightly.

"She'll hardly be publishing to the world that she's married a drunken profligate—"

This did not seem to North to call for an answer, and he attempted none. He turned and moved toward the front of the store, followed by the old merchant. At the door he paused.

"Thank you for your kindness, Mr. McBride!"

"It was no kindness, just a matter of business" said McBride hastily. "I'm no philanthropist, John, but just a plain man of business who'll drive a close bargain if he can."

"At any rate, I'm going to thank you," insisted North, smiling pleasantly. "Good-by," and he extended his hand, which the old merchant took.

"Good-by, and good luck to you, John, and you might drop me a line now and then just to say how you get on."

"I will. Good-by!"

"I know you'll succeed, John. A bit of application, a bit of necessity to spur you on, and we'll be proud of you yet!"

North laughed as he opened the door and stepped out; and Archibald McBride, looking through his dingy show-windows, watched him until he disappeared down the street; then he turned and reëntered his office.

Meanwhile North hurried away with the remnant of his little fortune in his pocket. Five minutes' walk brought him to the building that had sheltered him for the last few years. He climbed the stairs and entered the long hail above. He paused, key in hand, before his door, when he heard behind him a light footfall on the uncarpeted floor and the swish of a woman's skirts. As he turned abruptly, the woman who had evidently followed him up from the street, came swiftly down the hall toward him.

"Jack!" she said, when she was quite near.

The short winter's day had brought an early twilight to the place, and the woman was closely veiled, but the moment she spoke North recognized her, for there was something in the mellow full-throated quality of her speech which belonged only to one voice that he knew.

"Mrs. Langham!—Evelyn!" he exclaimed, starting back in dismay.

"Hush, Jack, you needn't call it from the housetops!" As she spoke she swept aside her veil and he saw her face, a superlatively pretty face with scarlet smiling lips and dark luminous eyes that were smiling, too.

"Do you want to see me, Evelyn?" he asked awkwardly.

But she was neither awkward nor embarrassed; she was still smiling up into his face with reckless eyes and brilliant lips. She pointed to the door with her small gloved hand.

"Open it, Jack!" she commanded.

For a moment he hesitated. She was the one person he did not wish to see, least of all did he wish to see her there. She was not nicely discreet, as he well knew. She did many things that were not wise, that were, indeed, frankly imprudent. But clearly they could not stand there in the hallway. Gilmore or some of Gilmore's friends might come up the stairs at any moment. Langham himself might be of these.

Something of all this passed through North's mind as he stood there hesitating. Then he unlocked the door, and standing aside, motioned her to precede him into the room.

This room, the largest of several, he occupied, was his parlor. On entering it he closed the door after him, and drew forward a chair for Evelyn, but he did not himself sit down, nor did he remove his overcoat.

He had known Evelyn all his life, they had played together as children; more than this, though now he would have been quite willing to forget the whole episode and even more than willing that she should forget it, there had been a time when he had moped in wretched melancholy because of what he had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a thing her heartlessness had seemed.

When they met again he had found her more alluring than ever, but more devoted to her pleasures also; and then Marshall Langham had come into her life. North had divined that the course of their love-making was far from smooth, for Langham's temper was high and his will arbitrary, nor was he one to bear meekly the crosses she laid on him, crosses which other men had borne in smiling uncomplaint, reasoning no doubt, that it was unwise to take her favors too seriously; that as they were easily achieved they were quite as easily forfeited. But Langham was not like the other men with whom she had amused herself. He was not only older and more brilliant, but was giving every indication that his professional success would be solid and substantial. Evelyn's father had championed his cause, and in the end she had married him.

In the five years that had elapsed since then, her romance had taken its place with the accepted things of life, and she revenged herself on Langham, for what she had come to consider his unreasonable exactions, by her recklessness, by her thirst for pleasure, and above all by her extravagance.

Through all the vicissitudes of her married life, the smallest part of which he only guessed, North had seen much of Evelyn. There was a daring dangerous recklessness in her mood that he had sensed and understood and to which he had made quick response. He knew that she was none too happy with Langham, and although he had been conscious of no wish to wrong the husband he had never paused to consider the outcome of his intimacy with the wife.

Evelyn was the first to break the silence.

"You wonder why I came here, don't you, Jack?" she said.

"You should never have done it!" he replied quickly.

"What about my letters, why didn't you answer them?" she demanded. "I hadn't one word from you in weeks. It quite spoiled my trip East. What was I to think? And then you sent me just a line saying you were leaving Mount Hope—" she drew in her breath sharply. There was a brief silence. "Why?" she asked at length.

"It is better that I should," he answered awkwardly.

He felt a sudden remorseful tenderness for her; he wished that she might have divined the change that had come over him; even how worthless a thing his devotion had been, the utter selfishness of it.

"Why is it better?" she asked. He was near enough for her to put out a small hand and rest it on his arm. "Jack, have I done anything to make you hate me? Don't you care any longer for me?"

"I care a great deal, Evelyn. I want you to think the best of me."

"But why do you go? And when do you think of going, Jack?" The hand that she had rested there a moment before, left his arm and dropped at her side.

"I don't know yet, my plans are very uncertain. I am quite at the end of my money. I have been a good deal of a fool, Evelyn."

Something in his manner restrained her, she was not so sure as she had been of her hold on him. She looked up appealingly into his face, the smile had left her lips and her eyes were sad, but he mistrusted the genuineness of this swift change of mood, certainly its permanence.

"What will there be left for me, Jack, when you go? I thought—I thought—" her full lips quivered.

She was realizing that this separation which her imagination had already invested with a tragic significance, meant much less to him than she believed it would mean to her; more than this, the cruel suspicion was certifying itself that in her absence from Mount Hope, North had undergone some strange transformation; was no longer the reckless, dissipated, young fellow who for months had been as her very shadow.

"I am going to-night, Evelyn," he said with sudden determination.

She gave a half smothered cry.

"To-night! To-night!" she repeated.

He changed his position uncomfortably.

"I am at the end of my string, Evelyn," he said slowly.

"I—I shall miss you dreadfully, Jack! You know I am frightfully unhappy; what will it be when you go? Marsh has made a perfect wreck of my life!"

"Nonsense, Evelyn!" he replied bruskly. "You must be careful what you say to me!"

"I haven't been careful before!" she asserted.

He bit his lips. She went swiftly on.

"I have told you everything! I don't care what happens to me—you know I don't, Jack! I am deadly desperately tired!" She paused, then she cried vehemently. "One endures a situation as long as one can, but there comes a time when it is impossible to go on with the falsehood any longer, and I have reached that time! It is my life, my happiness that are at stake!"

"Sometimes it is better to do without happiness," he philosophized.

"That is silly, Jack, no one believes that sort of thing any more; but it is good to teach to women and children, it saves a lot of bother, I suppose. But men take their happiness regardless of the rights of others!"

"Not always," he said.

"Yes, always!" she insisted.

"But you knew what Marsh was before you married him."

"It's a woman's vanity to believe she can reform, can control a man." She glanced at him furtively. What had happened to change him? Always until now he had responded to the recklessness of her mood, he had seemed to understand her without the need of words. Her brows met in an angry frown. Was he a coward? Did he fear Marshall Langham? Once more she rested her hand on his arm. "Jack, dear Jack, are you going to fail me, too?"

"What would you have me say or do, Evelyn?" he demanded impatiently.

She regarded him sadly.

"What has made you change, Jack? What is it; what have I done? Why did you not answer my letters? Why did you not come to see me?"

"I only learned that you were in town this afternoon," he said.

"Yes, but you had no intention of coming, I know you hadn't! You would have left Mount Hope without even a good-by to me!"

"It is hard enough to have to go, Evelyn!"

"It isn't that, Jack. What have I done? How have I displeased you?"

"You haven't displeased me, Evelyn," he faltered.

"Then why have you treated me as you have?"

"I thought it would be easier," he said.

"Have you forgotten what friends we were once?" she asked softly. "You always helped me out of my difficulties then, and you told me once that you cared—a great deal for me, more than you should ever care for any woman!"

"Yes," he answered shortly, and was silent.

He would scarcely have admitted to himself how foolish his early passion had been, for it was at least sincere and there could have been no sacrifice, at one time, that he would not have willingly made for her sake. His later sentiment for her had been a disgracing and a disgraceful thing, and he was glad to think of this boyish love, since it carried him back to a time before he had wrought only misery for himself. She misunderstood his reticence, she could not realize that she had lost the power that had once been hers.

"What a mistake I made, Jack!" she cried, and stretched out her hands toward him.

He fell back a step.

"Nonsense!" he said. He glanced sharply at her.

"How stupid you are!" she exclaimed.

She half rose from her chair with her hands still extended toward him. For a moment he met her glance, and then, disgusted and ashamed, withdrew his eyes from hers.

Evelyn sank back in her chair, and her face turned white and she covered it with her hands. North was the first to break the silence.

"We would both of us better forget this," he said quietly.

She rose and stood at his side. The color had returned to her cheeks.

"What a fool you are, John North!" she jeered softly. "And I might have made the tragic mistake of really caring for you!" She gave a little shiver of dismay, and then after a moment's tense silence: "What a boy you are—almost as much of a boy as when we used to play together."

"I think there is nothing more to say, Evelyn," North said shortly. "It is growing late. You must not be seen leaving here!"

She laughed.

"Oh, it would take a great deal to compromise me; though if Marsh ever finds out that I have been here he'll be ready to kill me!" But she still lingered, still seemed to invite.

North was silent.

"You must be in love, Jack! You see, I'll not grant that you are the saint you'd have me think you! Yes, you are in love!" for he colored angrily at her words. "Is it—"

He interrupted her harshly.

"Don't speak her name!"

"Then it is true! I'd heard that you were, but I did not believe it! Yes, you are right, we must forget that I came here to-day."

While she was speaking she had moved toward the door, and instinctively he had stepped past her to open it. When he turned with his hand on the knob, it brought them again face to face. The smile had left her lips, they were mere delicate lines of color. She raised herself on tiptoe and her face, gray-white, was very close to his.

"What a fool you are, Jack, what a coward you must be!" and she struck him on the cheek with her gloved hand. "You are a coward!" she cried.

His face grew as white as her own, and he did not trust himself to speak. She gave him a last contemptuous glance and drew her veil.

"Now open the door," she said insolently.

He did so, and she brushed past him swiftly and stepped out into the long hall. For a moment North stood staring after her, and then he closed the door.