“But you shot him down!”

“He attacked me; it was self-defense.”

She broke into a low-pitched, mirthless laughter.  Where was the filmy-eyed girl he had known?  The laughter broke off short—­like a sob.

“Don’t you suppose I’ve known?” she said.  “That I’ve read my father?  That I knew he was sending a bloodhound when he sent you?  But, oh, I thought you had a touch of the other thing!”

He cringed under her tone.

“I’ll bring him to you,” said Donnegan desperately.  “I’ll bring him here so that you can take care of him.”

“You’ll take him away from Lord Nick—­and Lebrun—­and the rest?” And it was the cold smile of her father with which she mocked him.

“I’ll do it.”

“You play a deep game,” said the girl bitterly.  “Why would you do it?”

“Because,” said Donnegan faintly.  “I love you.”

Her hand had been on the knob of the door; now she twitched it open and was gone; and the last that Donnegan saw was the width of the startled eyes.

“As if I were a leper,” muttered Donnegan.  “By heaven, she looked at me as if I were unclean!”

But once outside the door, the girl stood with both hands pressed to her face, stunned.  When she dropped them, they folded against her breast, and her face tipped up.

Even by starlight, had Donnegan been there to look, he would have seen the divinity which comes in the face of a woman when she loves.

26

Had he been there to see, even in the darkness he would have known, and he could have crossed the distance between their lives with a single step, and taken her into his heart.  But he did not see.  He had thrown himself upon his bunk and lay face down, his arms stretched rigidly out before him, his teeth set, his eyes closed.

For what Donnegan had wanted in the world, he had taken; by force when he could, by subtlety when he must.  And now, what he wanted most of all was gone from him, he felt, forever.  There was no power in his arms to take that part of her which he wanted; he had no craft which could encompass her.

Big George, stealing into the room, wondered at the lithe, slender form of the man in the bed.  Seeing him thus, it seemed that with the power of one hand, George could crush him.  But George would as soon have closed his fingers over a rattler.  He slipped away into the kitchen and sat with his arms wrapped around his body, as frightened as though he had seen a ghost.

But Donnegan lay on the bed without moving for hours and hours, until big George, who sat wakeful and terrified all that time, was sure that he slept.  Then he stole in and covered Donnegan with a blanket, for it was the chill, gray time of the night.

But Donnegan was not asleep, and when George rose in the morning, he found the master sitting at the table with his arms folded tightly across his breast and his eyes burning into vacancy.