She kept her face averted, sat gazing blankly out of the window; but when he sat on, mute and unresponsive--in point of fact not knowing what to say--she turned to look at him, and the glare of a pa.s.sing lamp showed her countenance profoundly distressed, mouth tense, brows knotted, eyes clouded with perplexity and appeal.
And of a sudden, seeing her so tormented and so piteous, his indignation ebbed, and with it all his doubts of her were dissipated; dimly he divined that something behind this dark fabric of mystery and inconsistency, no matter how inexplicable to him, excused all her apparent faithlessness and instability of character and purpose. He could not look upon this girl and hear her voice and believe that she was not at heart as sound and sweet, tender and loyal, as any that ever breathed.
A wave of tenderness and compa.s.sion brimmed his heart; he realized that he didn"t matter, that his amour propre was of no account--that nothing mattered so long as she were spared one little pang of self-reproach.
He said, gently: "I wouldn"t have you distress yourself on my account, Miss Shannon... I quite understand there must be things I _can"t_ understand--that you must have had your reasons for acting as you did."
"Yes," she said unevenly, but again with eyes averted--"I had; but they"re not easy, they"re impossible to explain--to you."
"Yet--when all"s said and done--I"ve no right to exact any explanation."
"Ah, but how can you say that, remembering what we"ve been through together?"
"You owe me nothing," he insisted; "whereas I owe you everything, even unquestioning faith. Even though I fail, I have this to thank you for--this one not-ign.o.ble impulse my life has known."
"You mustn"t say that, you mustn"t think it. I don"t deserve it. You wouldn"t say it--if you knew--"
"Perhaps I can guess enough to satisfy myself."
She gave him a swift, sidelong look of challenge, instinctively on the defensive.
"Why," she almost gasped--"what do you think--?"
"Does it matter what I think?"
"It does, to me: I wish to know!"
"Well," he conceded reluctantly, "I think that, when you had a chance to consider things calmly, waiting back there in the garden, you made up your mind it would be better to--to use your best judgment and--extricate yourself from an embarra.s.sing position--"
"You think that!" she interrupted bitterly. "You think that, after you had confided in me; after you"d confessed--when I made you, led you on to it--that you cared for me; after you"d told me how much my faith meant to you--you think that, after all that, I deliberately abandoned you because I suddenly realized you had been the Lone Wolf--!"
"I"m sorry if I hurt you. But what can I think?"
"But you are wrong!" she protested vehemently--"quite, quite wrong! I ran away from myself--not from you--and with another motive, too, that I can"t explain."
"You ran away from yourself--not from me?" he repeated, puzzled.
"Don"t you understand? Why make it so hard for me? Why make me say outright what pains me so?"
"Oh, I beg of you--"
"But if you won"t understand otherwise--I must tell you, I suppose."
She checked, breathless, flushed, trembling. "You recall our talk after dinner, that night--how I asked what if you found out you"d been mistaken in me, that I had deceived you; and how I told you it would be impossible for me ever to marry you?"
"I remember."
"It was because of that," she said--"I ran away; because I hadn"t been talking idly; because you _were_ mistaken in me, because I _was_ deceiving you, because I could never marry you, and because--suddenly--I came to know that, if I didn"t go then and there, I might never find the strength to leave you, and only suffering and unhappiness could come of it all. I had to go, as much for your sake as for my own."
"You mean me to understand, you found you were beginning to--to care a little for me?"
She made an effort to speak, but in the end answered only with a dumb inclination of her head.
"And ran away because love wasn"t possible between us?"
Again she nodded silently.
"Because I had been a criminal, I presume!"
"You"ve no right to say that--"
"What else can I think? You tell me you were afraid I might persuade you to become my wife--something which, for some inexplicable reason, you claim is impossible. What other explanation can I infer? What other explanation is needed? It"s ample, it covers everything, and I"ve no warrant to complain--G.o.d knows!"
She tried to protest, but he cut her short.
"There"s one thing I don"t understand at all! If that is so, if your repugnance for criminal a.s.sociations made you run away from me--why did you go back to Bannon?"
She started and gave him a furtive, frightened glance.
"You knew that?"
"I saw you--last night--followed you from Viel"s to your hotel."
"And you thought," she flashed in a vibrant voice--"you thought I was in his company of my own choice!"
"You didn"t seem altogether downcast," he countered, "Do you wish me to understand you were with him against your will?"
"No," she said slowly.... "No: I returned to him voluntarily, knowing perfectly what I was about."
"Through fear of him--?"
"No. I can"t claim that."
"Rather than me--?"
"You"ll never understand," she told him a little wearily--"never. It was a matter of duty. I had to go back--I had to!"
Her voice trailed off into a broken little sob. But as, moved beyond his strength to resist, Lanyard put forth a hand to take the white-gloved one resting on the cushion beside her, she withdrew it with a swift gesture of denial.
"No!" she cried. "Please! You mustn"t do that... You only make it harder..."
"But you love me!"
"I can"t. It"s impossible. I would--but I may not!"
"Why?"
"I can"t tell you."