As this thing grew in him, a black and foreboding thunderstorm on the horizon of his dreams, an impulse which he did not resist dragged him more and more frequently down to the old home, and Mary Josephine was always with him.  They let no one know of these visits.  And they talked about John Keith, and in Mary Josephine’s eyes he saw more than once a soft and starry glow of understanding.  She loved the memory of this man because he, her brother, had loved him.  And after these hours came the nights when truth, smiling at him, flung aside its mask and stood a grinning specter, and he measured to the depths the falseness of his triumph.  His comfort was the thought that she knew.  Whatever happened, she would know what John Keith had been.  For he, John Keith, had told her.  So much of the truth had he lived.

He fought against the new strain that was descending upon him slowly and steadily as the days passed.  He could not but see the new light that had grown in Miriam Kirkstone’s eyes.  At times it was more than a dawn of hope.  It was almost certainty.  She had faith in him, faith in his promise to her, in his power to fight, his strength to win.  Her growing friendship with Mary Josephine accentuated this, inspiring her at times almost to a point of conviction, for Mary Josephine’s confidence in him was a passion.  Even McDowell, primarily a fighter of his own battles, cautious and suspicious, had faith in him while he waited for Shan Tung.  It was this blind belief in him that depressed him more than all else, for he knew that victory for himself must be based more or less on deceit and treachery.  For the first time he heard Miriam laugh with Mary Josephine; he saw the gold and the brown head together out in the sun; he saw her face shining with a light that he had never seen there before, and then, when he came upon them, their faces were turned to him, and his heart bled even as he smiled and held out his hands to Mary Josephine.  They trusted him, and he was a liar, a hypocrite, a Pharisee.

On the ninth day he had finished supper with Mary Josephine when the telephone rang.  He rose to answer it.  It was Miriam Kirkstone.

“He has returned,” she said.

That was all.  The words were in a choking voice.  He answered and hung up the receiver.  He knew a change had come into his face when he turned to Mary Josephine.  He steeled himself to a composure that drew a questioning tenseness into her face.  Gently he stroked her soft hair, explaining that Shan Tung had returned and that he was going to see him.  In his bedroom he strapped his Service automatic under his coat.

At the door, ready to go, he paused.  Mary Josephine came to him and put her hands to his shoulders.  A strange unrest was in her eyes, a question which she did not ask.

Something whispered to him that it was the last time.  Whatever happened now, tonight must leave him clean.  His arms went around her, he drew her close against his breast, and for a space he held her there, looking into her eyes.