"What!"

A sudden fury seized upon Gordon. For the first time since he had been talking with Kate, he realised Hawke the man, a living treacherous being, flesh and blood, that could be crushed and killed. The idea sent a thrill through his veins. The l.u.s.t for revenge sprang up, winged and armed, in a flame of hatred. His imagination pictured the scene, clear cut as a cameo; he saw the keen, pointed face bending over Kate's shoulder; he heard him unctuously rolling out loving phrases, savouring them as he spoke, and chuckling over the deceit.

He turned on Kate in a frenzy.

"He dictated them; and he laughed as he did it, I suppose. Did he laugh? Tell me! Did he laugh?"

Gordon shook the girl's arm savagely, his face livid and working with pa.s.sion. His aspect terrified her. She dared not tell him the truth, and she turned away with a shudder.

"That is answer enough," and he dropped her arm and began again pacing about the room. Now, however, he walked quietly and softly, with his shoulders rounded and his head thrust forward. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, and there was something catlike in his tread, which reminded Kate irresistibly of Hawke. Indeed, to her fevered eyes, he began to change and to grow like his enemy in face and bearing.

"Don't," she whispered. "You frighten me. You remind me of him."

The words recalled Gordon to himself. There was something else he wished to know. What was it? He beat his forehead with the palms of his hands in the effort to recollect. If only he could banish Hawke from his mind until she had gone! At last the question took shape.

"The letters he was reading to you?"

"They were notes and appointments written when we were both at Poonah," she answered, submissively. "I never thought that he would keep them, though I might have known he would."

"And the three he has still?"

"They were the only real letters I ever wrote to him. There were four, but I burned one to-night."

"Yes! I saw."

"I wrote them on the way home, from Calcutta, Aden, Brindisi and the last from London the evening I arrived."

"You have never written since?"

"Never! Nor have I seen him since until he compelled me to come to-night."

She stopped suddenly, as if some new idea had crossed her mind. In a moment, however, she began again, but she was speaking to herself.

"No. I had to come. There was no other way. I dared not leave those letters in his hands. Oh! how I hate him!"

She uttered the words with a slow intensity which enforced conviction, looking straight at Gordon; and he saw a flame commence to glow in the depths of her eyes and spread until her whole face was ablaze with it.

"Do you mean that?" he queried, almost eagerly.

"Can you doubt it?" she replied, starting to her feet. "Oh, yes, you would! I forgot. Oh, David, if only you had understood me better!"

It was what he had been saying to himself, with a deep self-reproach, and her repet.i.tion of his thought, coupled with a weary gesture of despair, exaggerated the feeling on him by the addition of a very lively pity.

"So that is true, then?" he asked, hesitatingly. "You no longer care for him?"

The mere weakness of the question betokened a mind in doubt, as to its choice of action, betrayed a certain tentative indecision.

"I never really cared for him," she answered.

A look of actual gladness showed in the man's face. They were standing opposite to one another, and the girl shut her eyelids tight, as if the sight hurt her.

"That pleases you!" she exclaimed, twisting her hands convulsively.

"Ah! Don't you understand? It is the most horrible part of it all to me--that I never cared for him. It doubles my shame. He dominated me when he was with me, close to me, by my side; but I never cared for him. I had realised that by the time I reached England, and my last letter was to tell him so."

Her whole att.i.tude expressed humiliation. Had she been able to look back upon a pa.s.sion overmastering both Hawke and herself, and encircling them in a ring of flame which, by its very brightness, made the world beyond look colourless and empty, she could have found some plea to alleviate her consciousness of guilt. As it was, however, the episode appeared nakedly sordid to her recollection, unredeemed by even a flavour of romance.

"So you never really cared for him!"

Gordon's earnest insistence struck her as singular. He seemed to have taken no note of the last words, but dwelt upon that one point--clung to it, it appeared. What difference could it make to him, she wondered, whether she had cared or not; the sin lay between them none the less. She watched his face for the solution. Perplexity was shown in the contracted forehead and in a tremulous twitching of the lips.

As a matter of fact, Gordon was hunting a will-o'-the-wisp of hope, and it had led him to the brink of a resolve. Should he take the leap, or soberly decline it! He hesitated, half made up his mind, took one short halting step towards Kate and stopped, checked by a new thought.

"You said you would have broken off our engagement had he allowed you!"

"Yes! I said that."

"Why didn't you when you returned to England and felt free from him?"

The girl gained a hint of his drift more from his manner than his question, and answered him warily, with a spark of hope.

"Because, as I told you, I relied on you so much, and I felt the need of some one I could trust more than ever then. Besides, every one approved of the marriage."

An abrupt movement warned her that she had chosen a wrong turning. A quick traverse, however, brought her out upon the right road again.

"It is not so easy for a girl to cut the knot. She must find explanations to justify her--valid not only to her parents, but to the man. And I knew you would not let me go so lightly. I knew that I meant all the world to you."

She paused, but Gordon gave no sign, and she repeated her words with a nervous smile.

"It sounds queer, but it is true all the same. I knew that I meant all the world to you."

Again she waited, but with a like result. He was still pondering, still in doubt. The way in which he drew his breath, now in short, jerky catches, now in a long, labouring sigh, made that plain to her.

Her shot had failed of its aim.

A sudden gust of the wind brought the rustle of the trees through the open door. Kate looked at the clock; the hands made one threatening line.

"Two o'clock!" she cried, with a start. "I must get back to Keswick while they are still asleep--asleep." She spoke the word again with a melancholy longing in her voice which was indescribably sad.

"You will write, then," she resumed, "and break it off."

Gordon nodded a.s.sent, and she turned away in search for something.

The action helped to decide Gordon by pointing out the necessity of decision. What course should he take? He had thought to choose his path on careful reflection when Kate was on her way back to Keswick; but he saw now that would be too late. It would be time enough then to consider the consequences of his choice, how best to cope with them and force them to his service; but the choice itself could not be deferred. For if he let her go quietly without another word the matter would be settled finally, the choice determined, a prison wall raised to further effort. What course should he take? The question pressed urgently for an immediate answer.

He went to the door and out into the porch. The sudden slip into night seemed to him a symbol of what his life would mean if he kept silence.

His mind played with the idea and carried it further. It pictured him standing alone in the empty darkness and the girl behind him alone in the empty light. The beck, too, at the back of the house, whispered its music in his ears and pleaded with him.

A timid hand was laid on his arm: Kate was by his side.

"David!"