Kitabı oku: «The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South», sayfa 19

"Well, yer better wake up just er minute an' tell de major – Mister Tom got ter have it out wid him."

"Yes, I know, and that's what scares me. Won't you tell him for us right away? Get him in a good humor, make him laugh, say a good word for us and then tell him. Tell him how useless it will be to oppose us. He can't hold out long against Tom, he loves him so."

"Mr. Tom want me ter tell de major ter-night? He ax yer ter see me?"

"No. He doesn't know what I came for. I just decided all of a sudden to come. I want to surprise him. He is going to tell his father himself to-night. But somehow I'm afraid, Aunt Minerva. I want you to help us. You will, won't you?"

The black woman shook her head emphatically:

"Nasah, I ain't gwine ter git mixed up in dis thing!"

"Aunt Minerva!"

"Nasah – I'se skeered!"

"Ah, please?"

"Nasah!"

"Please – "

"Na, na, na!"

"Aunt Minerva – "

"Na – "

The girl's pleading eyes were resistless and the black lips smiled:

"Cose I will, chile! Cose I will – I'll see 'im right away. I'll tell him de minute I lays my eyes on 'im."

She turned to go and ran squarely into Norton as he strode into the room. She stopped and stammered:

"Why – why – wuz yer lookin' fer me, major?"

Norton gazed at her a moment and couldn't call his mind from its painful train of thought. He spoke finally with sharp accent:

"No. I want to see Cleo."

Helen slipped behind Minerva:

"Stay and tell him now. I'll go."

"No, better wait," was her low reply, as she watched Norton furtively. "I don't like de way his eyes er spittin' fire."

Norton turned to Minerva sharply:

"Find Cleo and tell her I wish to see her immediately!"

"Yassah – yassah!" Minerva answered, nervously, whispering to Helen: "Come on, honey – git outen here – come on!"

Helen followed mechanically, glancing timidly back over her shoulder at Norton's drawn face.

CHAPTER XXI
THE SECOND BLOW

Norton could scarcely control his eagerness to face the woman he loathed. Every nerve of his body tingled with the agony of his desire to be free.

He was ready for the end, no matter what she might do. The time had come in the strong man's life when compromise, conciliation, and delay were alike impossible. He cursed himself and his folly to-night that he had delayed so long. He had tried to be fair to the woman he hated. His sense of justice, personal honor, and loyalty to his pledged word, had given her the opportunity to strike him the blow she had delivered through the girl. He had been more than fair and he would settle it now for all time.

That she was afraid to meet him was only too evident from her leaving the house on his return. He smiled grimly when he recalled the effrontery with which she had defied him at their last meeting.

Her voice, sharp and angry, rang out to Andy at the back door.

Norton's strong jaw closed with a snap, and he felt his whole being quiver at the rasping sound of her familiar tones. She had evidently recovered her composure and was ready with her usual insolence.

She walked quickly into the room, and threw her head up with defiance:

"Well?"

"Why have you avoided me to-night?"

"Have I?"

"I think so."

Cleo laughed sneeringly:

"You'll think again before I'm done with you!"

She shook her head with the old bravado, but the keen eyes of the man watching saw that she was not sure of her ground.

He folded his arms and quietly began:

"For twenty years I have breathed the air poisoned by your presence. I have seen your insolence grow until you have announced yourself the mistress of my house. You knew that I was afraid of your tongue, and thought that a coward would submit in the end. Well, it's over. I've held my hand for the past four weeks until my duty to the people was done. I've been a coward when I saw the tangled web of lies and shame in which I floundered. But the past is past. I face life to-night as it is" – his voice dropped – "and I'm going to take what comes. Your rule in my house is at an end – "

"Indeed!"

"Helen leaves here to-morrow morning and you go."

"Really?"

"I've made a decent provision for your future – which is more than you deserve. Pack your things!"

The woman threw him a look of hate and her lips curved with scorn:

"So – you have kindly allowed me to stay until your campaign was ended. Well, I've understood you. I knew that you were getting ready for me. I'm ready for you."

"And you think that I will allow you to remain in my house after what has passed between us?"

"Yes, you will," she answered smiling. "I'm not going to leave. You'll have to throw me into the street. And if you do, God may pity you, I'll not. There's one thing you fear more than a public scandal!"

Norton advanced and glared at her:

"What?"

"The hatred of the boy you idolize. I dare you to lay your hands on me to put me out of this house! And if you do, Tom will hear from my lips the story of the affair that ended in the death of his mother. I'll tell him the truth, the whole truth, and then a great deal more than the truth – "

"No doubt!" he interrupted.

"But there'll be enough truth in all I say to convince him beyond a doubt. I promise you now" – she dropped her voice to a whisper – "to lie to him with a skill so sure, so cunning, so perfect, no denial you can ever make will shake his faith in my words. He loves me and I'll make him believe me. When I finish my story he ought to kill you. There's one thing you can depend on with his high-strung and sensitive nature and the training you have given him in racial purity – when he hears my story, he'll curse you to your face and turn from you as if you were a leper. I'll see that he does this if it's the last and only thing I do on this earth!"

"And if you do – "

"Oh, I'm not afraid!" she sneered, holding his eye with the calm assurance of power. "I've thought it all over and I know exactly what to say."

He leaned close:

"Now listen! I don't want to hurt you but you're going out of my life. Every day while I've sheltered you in this house you have schemed and planned to drag me down again to your level. You have failed. I am not going to risk that girl's presence here another day – and you go!"

As he spoke the last words he turned from her with a gesture of final dismissal. She tossed her head in a light laugh and calmly said:

"You're too late!"

He stopped in his tracks, his heart chilled by the queer note of triumph in her voice. Without turning or moving a muscle he asked:

"What do you mean?"

"Tom is already in love with Helen!"

He wheeled and hurled himself at her:

"What?"

"And she is desperately in love with him" – she stopped and deliberately laughed again in his face – "and I have known it for weeks!"

Another step brought his trembling figure towering over her:

"I don't believe you!" he hissed.

Cleo walked leisurely to the door and smiled:

"Ask the servants if you doubt my word." She finished with a sneer. "I begged you not to fight, major!"

He stood rooted to the spot and watched her slowly walk backward into the hall. It was a lie, of course. And yet the calm certainty with which she spoke chilled his soul as he recalled his own suspicions. He must know now without a moment's delay and he must know the whole truth without reservation.

Before he approached either Tom or Helen there was one on whom he had always relied to tell the truth. Her honest black face had been the one comfort of his life through the years of shadow and deceit. If Minerva knew she would tell him.

He rushed to the door that led to the kitchen and called:

"Minerva!"

The answer came feebly:

"Yassah."

"Come here!"

He had controlled his emotions sufficiently to speak his last command with some degree of dignity.

He walked back to the table and waited for her coming. His brain was in a whirl of conflicting, stunning emotion. He simply couldn't face at once the appalling possibilities such a statement involved. His mind refused to accept it. As yet it was a lie of Cleo's fertile invention, and still his reason told him that such a lie could serve no sane purpose in such a crisis. He felt that he was choking. His hand involuntarily went to his neck and fumbled at his collar.

Minerva's heavy footstep was heard and he turned sharply:

"Minerva!"

"Yassah" – she answered, glancing at him timidly. Never had she seen his face so ghastly or the look in his eye so desperate. She saw that he was making an effort at self-control and knew instinctively that the happiness of the lovers was at stake. It was too solemn a moment for anything save the naked truth and her heart sank in pity and sympathy for the girl she had promised to help.

"Minerva," he began evenly, "you are the only servant in this house who has never lied to me" – he took a step closer. "Are Tom and Miss Helen lovers?"

Minerva fumbled her apron, glanced at his drawn face, looked down on the floor and stammered:

"De Lordy, major – "

"Yes or no!" he thundered.

The black woman moistened her lips, hesitated, turned her honest face on his and said tremblingly:

"Yassah, dey is!"

His eyes burned into hers:

"And you, too, have known this for weeks?"

"Yassah. Mister Tom ax me not ter tell ye – "

Norton staggered to a seat and sank with a groan of despair, repeating over and over again in low gasps the exclamation that was a sob and a prayer:

"Great God! – Great God!"

Minerva drew near with tender sympathy. Her voice was full of simple, earnest pleading:

"De Lordy, major, what's de use? Young folks is young folks, an' love's love. What ye want ter break 'em up fer – dey's so happy! Yer know, sah, ye can't mend er butterfly's wing er put er egg back in de shell. Miss Helen's young, beautiful, sweet and good – won't ye let me plead fer 'em, sah?"

With a groan of anguish Norton sprang to his feet:

"Silence – silence!"

"Yassah!"

"Go – find Miss Helen – send her to me quickly. I don't want to see Mr. Tom. I want to see her alone first."

Minerva had backed out of his way and answered plaintively:

"Yassah."

She paused and extended her hand pleadingly:

"You'll be easy wid 'em, sah?"

He hadn't heard. The tall figure slowly sank into the chair and his shoulders drooped in mortal weariness.

Minerva shook her head sadly and turned to do his bidding.

Norton's eyes were set in agony, his face white, his breast scarcely moving to breathe, as he waited Helen's coming. The nerves suddenly snapped – he bowed his face in his hands and sobbed aloud:

"Oh, dear God, give me strength! I can't – I can't confess to my boy!"

CHAPTER XXII
THE TEST OF LOVE

Norton made a desperate effort to pull himself together for his appeal to Helen. On its outcome hung the possibility of saving himself from the terror that haunted him. If he could tell the girl the truth and make her see that a marriage with Tom was utterly out of the question because her blood was stained with that of a negro, it might be possible to save himself the humiliation of the full confession of their relationship and of his bitter shame.

He had made a fearful mistake in not telling her this at their first interview, and a still more frightful mistake in rearing her in ignorance of the truth. No life built on a lie could endure. He was still trying desperately to hold his own on its shifting sands, but in his soul of souls he had begun to despair of the end. He was clutching at straws. In moments of sanity he realized it, but there was nothing else to do. The act was instinctive.

The girl's sensitive mind was the key to a possible solution. He had felt instinctively on the day he told her the first fact about the disgrace of her birth, vague and shadowy as he had left it, that she could never adjust herself to the certainty that negro blood flowed in her veins. He had observed that her aversion to negroes was peculiarly acute. If her love for the boy were genuine, if it belonged to the big things of the soul, and were not the mere animal impulse she had inherited from her mother, he would have a ground of most powerful appeal. Love seeks not its own. If she really loved she would sink her own life to save his.

It was a big divine thing to demand of her and his heart sank at the thought of her possible inheritance from Cleo. Yet he knew by an instinct deeper and truer than reason, that the ruling power in this sensitive, lonely creature was in the spirit, not the flesh. He recalled in vivid flashes the moments he had felt this so keenly in their first pitiful meeting. If he could win her consent to an immediate flight and the sacrifice of her own desires to save the boy! It was only a hope – it was a desperate one – but he clung to it with painful eagerness.

Why didn't she come? The minutes seemed hours and there were minutes in which he lived a life.

He rose nervously and walked toward the mantel, lifted his eyes and they rested on the portrait of his wife.

"'My brooding spirit will watch and guard!'"

He repeated the promise of her last scrawled message. He leaned heavily against the mantel, his eyes burning with an unusual brightness.

"Oh, Jean, darling," he groaned, "if you see and hear and know, let me feel your presence! Your dear eyes are softer and kinder than the world's to-night. Help me, I'm alone, heartsick and broken!"

He choked down a sob, walked back to the chair and sank in silence. His eyes were staring into space, his imagination on fire, passing in stern review the events of his life. How futile, childish and absurd it all seemed! What a vain and foolish thing its hope and struggles, its dreams and ambitions! What a failure for all its surface brilliance! He was standing again at the window behind the dais of the President of the Senate, watching the little drooping figure of the Governor staggering away into oblivion, and his heart went out to him in a great tenderness and pity. He longed to roll back the years that he might follow the impulse he had felt to hurry down the steps of the Capitol, draw the broken man into a sheltered spot, slip his arms about him and say:

"Who am I to judge? You're my brother – I'm sorry! Come, we'll try it again and help one another!"

The dream ended in a sudden start. He had heard the rustle of a dress at the door and knew without lifting his head that she was in the room.

Only the slightest sound had come from her dry throat, a little muffled attempt to clear it of the tightening bands. It was scarcely audible, yet his keen ear had caught it instantly, not only caught the excitement under which she was struggling, but in it the painful consciousness of his hostility and her pathetic desire to be friends.

He rose trembling and turned his dark eyes on her white uplifted face.

A feeling of terror suddenly weakened her knees. He was evidently not angry as she had feared. There was something bigger and more terrible than anger behind the mask he was struggling to draw over his mobile features.

"What has happened, major?" she asked in a subdued voice.

"That is what I must know of you, child," he replied, watching her intently.

She pressed closer with sudden desperate courage, her voice full of wistful friendliness:

"Oh, major, what have I done to offend you? I've tried so hard to win your love and respect. All my life I've been alone in a world of strangers, friendless and homesick – "

He lifted his hand with a firm gesture:

"Come, child, to the point! I must know the truth now. Tom has made love to you?"

She blushed:

"I – I – wish to see Tom before I answer – "

Norton dropped his uplifted arm with a groan:

"Thank you," he murmured in tones scarcely audible. "I have your answer!" – he paused and looked at her curiously – "And you love him?"

The girl hesitated for just an instant, her blue eyes flashed and she drew her strong, young figure erect:

"Yes! And I'm proud of it. His love has lifted me into the sunlight and made the world glorious – made me love everything in it – every tree and every flower and every living thing that moves and feels – "

She stopped abruptly and lifted her flushed face to his:

"I've learned to love you, in spite of your harshness to me – I love you because you are his father!"

He turned from her and then wheeled suddenly, his face drawn with pain:

"Now, I must be frank, I must be brutal. I must know the truth without reservation – how far has this thing gone?"

"I – I – don't understand you!"

"Marriage is impossible! I told you that and you must have realized it."

Her head drooped:

"You said so – "

"Impossible – utterly impossible! And you know it" – he drew a deep breath. "What – what are your real relations?"

"My – real – relations?" she gasped.

"Answer me now, before God! I'll hold your secret sacred – your life and his may depend on it" – his voice dropped to a tense whisper. "Your love is pure and unsullied?"

The girl's eyes flashed with rage:

"As pure and unsullied as his dead mother's for you!"

"Thank God!" he breathed. "I believe you – but I had to know, child! I had to know – there are big, terrible reasons why I had to know."

A tear slowly stole down Helen's flushed cheeks as she quietly asked:

"Why – why should you insult and shame me by asking that question?"

"My knowledge of your birth."

The girl smiled sadly:

"Yet you might have guessed that I had learned to cherish honor and purity before I knew I might not claim them as my birthright!"

"Forgive me, child," he said contritely, "if in my eagerness, my fear, my anguish, I hurt you. But I had to ask that question! I had to know. Your answer gives me courage" – he paused and his voice quivered with deep intensity – "you really love Tom?"

"With a love beyond words!"

"The big, wonderful love that comes to the human soul but once?"

"Yes!"

His eyes were piercing to the depths now:

"With the deep, unselfish yearning that asks nothing for itself and seeks only the highest good of its beloved?"

"Yes – yes," she answered mechanically and, pausing, looked again into his burning eyes; "but you frighten me – " she grasped a chair for support, recovered herself and went on rapidly – "you mustn't ask me to give him up – I won't give him up! Poor and friendless, with a shadow over my life and everything against me, I have won him and he's mine! I have the right to his love – I didn't ask to be born. I must live my own life. I have as much right to happiness as you. Why must I bear the sins of my father and mother? Have I broken the law? Haven't I a heart that can ache and break and cry for joy?"

He allowed the first paroxysm of her emotion to spend itself before he replied, and then in quiet tones said:

"You must give him up!"

"I won't! I won't, I tell you!" she said through her set teeth as she suddenly swung her strong, young form before him. "I won't give him up! His love has made life worth living and I'm going to live it! I don't care what you say – he's mine – and you shall not take him from me!"

Norton was stunned by the fiery intensity with which her answer had been given. There was no mistaking the strength of her character. Every vibrant note of her voice had rung with sincerity, purity, the justice of her cause, and the consciousness of power. He was dealing with no trembling schoolgirl's mind, filled with sentimental dreams. A woman, in the tragic strength of a great nature, stood before him. He felt this greatness instinctively and met it with reverence. It could only be met thus, and as he realized its strength, his heart took fresh courage. His own voice became tender, eager, persuasive:

"But suppose, my dear, I show you that you will destroy the happiness and wreck the life of the man you love?"

"Impossible! He knows that I'm nameless and his love is all the deeper, truer and more manly because he realizes that I am defenseless."

"But suppose I convince you?"

"You can't!"

"Suppose," he said in a queer tone, "I tell you that the barrier between you is so real, so loathsome – "

"Loathsome?" she repeated with a start.

"So loathsome," he went on evenly, "that when he knows the truth, whether he wishes it or not, he will instinctively turn from you with a shudder."

"I won't believe it!"

"Suppose I prove to you that marriage would wreck both your life and his" – he gazed at her with trembling intensity – "would you give him up to save him?"

She held his eye steadily:

"Yes – I'd die to save him!"

A pitiful stillness followed. The man scarcely moved. His lips quivered and his eyes grew dim. He looked at her pathetically and motioned her to a seat.

"And if I convince you," he went on tenderly, "you will submit yourself to my advice and leave America?"

The blue eyes never flinched as she firmly replied:

"Yes. But I warn you that no such barrier can exist."

"Then I must prove to you that it does." He drew a deep breath and watched her. "You realize the fact that a man who marries a nameless girl bars himself from all careers of honor?"

"The honor of fools, yes – of the noble and wise, no!"

"You refuse to see that the shame which shadows a mother's life will smirch her children, and like a deadly gangrene at last eat the heart out of her husband's love?"

"My faith in him is too big – "

"You can conceive of no such barrier?"

"No!"

"In the first rush of love," he replied kindly, "you feel this. Emotion obscures reason. But there are such barriers between men and women."

"Name one!"

His brow clouded, his lips moved to speak and stopped. It was more difficult to frame in speech than he had thought. His jaw closed with firm decision at last and he began calmly:

"I take an extreme case. Suppose, for example, your father, a proud Southern white man, of culture, refinement and high breeding, forgot for a moment that he was white and heard the call of the Beast, and your mother were an octoroon – what then?"

The girl flushed with anger:

"Such a barrier, yes! Nothing could be more loathsome. But why ask me so disgusting a question? No such barrier could possibly exist between us!"

Norton's eyes were again burning into her soul as he asked in a low voice:

"Suppose it does?"

The girl smiled with a puzzled look:

"Suppose it does? Of course, you're only trying to prove that such an impossible barrier might exist! And for the sake of argument I agree that it would be real" – she paused and her breath came in a quick gasp. She sprang to her feet clutching at her throat, trembling from head to foot – "What do you mean by looking at me like that?"

Norton lowered his head and barely breathed the words:

"That is the barrier between you!"

Helen looked at him dazed. The meaning was too big and stupefying to be grasped at once.

"Why, of course, major," she faltered, "you just say that to crush me in the argument. But I've given up the point. I've granted that such a barrier may exist and would be real. But you haven't told me the one between us."

The man steeled his heart, turned his face away and spoke in gentle tones:

"I am telling you the pitiful, tragic truth – your mother is a negress – "

With a smothered cry of horror the girl threw herself on him and covered his mouth with her hand, half gasping, half screaming her desperate appeal:

"Stop! don't – don't say it! – take it back! Tell me that it's not true – tell me that you only said it to convince me and I'll believe you. If the hideous thing is true – for the love of God deny it now! If it's true – lie to me" – her voice broke and she clung to Norton's arms with cruel grip – "lie to me! Tell me that you didn't mean it, and I'll believe you – truth or lie, I'll never question it! I'll never cross your purpose again – I'll do anything you tell me, major" – she lifted her streaming eyes and began slowly to sink to her knees – "see how humble – how obedient I am! You don't hate me, do you? I'm just a poor, lonely girl, helpless and friendless now at your feet" – her head sank into her hands until the beautiful brown hair touched the floor – "have mercy! have mercy on me!"

Norton bent low and fumbled for the trembling hand. He couldn't see and for a moment words were impossible.

He found her hand and pressed it gently:

"I'm sorry, little girl! I'd lie to you if I could – but you know a lie don't last long in this world. I've lied about you before – I'd lie now to save you this anguish, but it's no use – we all have to face things in the end!"

With a mad cry of pain, the girl sprang to her feet and staggered to the table:

"Oh, God, how could any man with a soul – any living creature, even a beast of the field – bring me into the world – teach me to think and feel, to laugh and cry, and thrust me into such a hell alone! My proud father – I could kill him!"

Norton extended his hands to her in a gesture of instinctive sympathy:

"Come, you'll see things in a calm light to-morrow, you are young and life is all before you!"

"Yes!" she cried fiercely, "a life of shame – a life of insult, of taunts, of humiliation, of horror! The one thing I've always loathed was the touch of a negro – "

She stopped suddenly and lifted her hand, staring with wildly dilated eyes at the nails of her finely shaped fingers to find if the telltale marks of negro blood were there which she had seen on Cleo's. Finding none, the horror in her eyes slowly softened into a look of despairing tenderness as she went on:

"The one passionate yearning of my soul has been to be a mother – to feel the breath of a babe on my heart, to hear it lisp my name and know a mother's love – the love I've starved for – and now, it can never be!"

She had moved beyond the table in her last desperate cry and Norton followed with a look of tenderness:

"Nonsense," he cried persuasively, "you're but a child yourself. You can go abroad where no such problem of white and black race exists. You can marry there and be happy in your home and little ones, if God shall give them!"

She turned on him savagely:

"Well, God shall not give them! I'll see to that! I'm young, but I'm not a fool. I know something of the laws of life. I know that Tom is not like you" – she turned and pointed to the portrait on the wall – "he is like his great-grandfather! Mine may have been – "

Her voice choked with passion. She grasped a chair with one hand and tore at the collar of her dress with the other. She had started to say "mine may have been a black cannibal!" and the sheer horror of its possibility had strangled her. When she had sufficiently mastered her feelings to speak she said in a strange muffled tone:

"I ask nothing of God now – if I could see Him, I'd curse Him to His face!"

"Come, come!" Norton exclaimed, "this is but a passing ugly fancy – such things rarely happen – "

"But they do happen!" she retorted slowly. "I've known one such tragedy, of a white mother's child coming into the world with the thick lips, kinky hair, flat nose and black skin of a cannibal ancestor! She killed herself when she was strong enough to leap out the window" – her voice dropped to a dreamy chant – "yes, blood will tell – there's but one thing for me to do! I wonder, with the yellow in me, if I'll have the courage."

Norton spoke with persuasive tenderness:

"You mustn't think of such madness! I'll send you abroad at once and you can begin life over again – "

Helen suddenly snatched the chair to which she had been holding out of her way and faced Norton with flaming eyes:

"I don't want to be an exile! I've been alone all my miserable orphan life! I don't want to go abroad and die among strangers! I've just begun to live since I came here! I love the South – it's mine – I feel it – I know it! I love its blue skies and its fields – I love its people – they are mine! I think as you think, feel as you feel – "

She paused and looked at him queerly:

"I've learned to honor, respect and love you because I've grown to feel that you stand for what I hold highest, noblest and best in life" – the voice died in a sob and she was silent.

The man turned away, crying in his soul:

"O God, I'm paying the price now!"

"What can I do!" she went on at last. "What is life worth since I know this leper's shame? There are millions like me, yes. If I could bend my back and be a slave there are men and women who need my services. And there are men I might know – yes – but I can't – I can't! I'm not a slave. I'm not bad. I can't stoop. There's but one thing!"

Norton's face was white with emotion:

"I can't tell you, little girl, how sorry I am" – his voice broke. He turned, suddenly extended his hand and cried hoarsely: "Tell me what I can do to help you – I'll do anything on this earth that's within reason!"

The girl looked up surprised at his anguish, wondering vaguely if he could mean what he had said, and then threw herself at him in a burst of sudden, fierce rebellion, her voice, low and quivering at first, rising to the tragic power of a defiant soul in combat with overwhelming odds:

"Then give me back the man I love – he's mine! He's mine, I tell you, body and soul! God – gave – him – to – me! He's your son, but I love him! He's my mate! He's of age – he's no longer yours! His time has come to build his own home – he's mine – not yours! He's my life – and you're tearing the very heart out of my body!"

The white, trembling figure slowly crumpled at his feet.

He took both of her hands, and lifted her gently:

"Pull yourself together, child. It's hard, I know, but you begin to realize that you must bear it. You must look things calmly in the face now."

The girl's mouth hardened and she answered with bitterness:

"Yes, of course – I'm nobody! We must consider you" – she staggered to a chair and dropped limply into it, her voice a whisper – "we must consider Tom – yes – yes – we must, too – I know that – "

Norton pressed eagerly to her side and leaned over the drooping figure:

"You can begin to see now that I was right," he pleaded. "You love Tom – he's worth saving – you'll do as I ask and give him up?"

The sensitive young face was convulsed with an agony words could not express and the silence was pitiful. The man bending over her could hear the throb of his own heart. A quartet of serenaders celebrating the victory of the election stopped at the gate and the soft strains of the music came through the open window. Norton felt that he must scream in a moment if she did not answer. He bent low and softly repeated: