"Oh, don't be a bigger fool than you have been! Unless," with sudden suspicion, "you've known all along? Perhaps you have. Even you could hardly have been so completely duped."

"If you will tell me what you are talking about--"

"Read it. It is plain enough."

The professor slowly opened the folded sheet. It was a longer note than the one she had left for him.

"Dear John," he read, "if I I'd known yesterday that I would leave so soon I could have said good-bye. But my decision was made suddenly. I think you must have seen how it is with Benis and Mary and I can't go without telling you that I knew about it from the first. I don't want you to blame Benis. He told me about it before we were married, and I took the risk with my eyes open. How could he, or I, have guessed that he had given up hope too soon?--and anyway, it wasn't in the bargain that I should love him.--It just happened.--He is desperately unhappy.

Help him if you can.--Your affectionate Desire."

"My affectionate Desire!" mocked John, still in that high, strained voice which now was perilously near a sob. "That--that is what I was to her, a convenient friend! You--you had it all. And let it go, for the sake of that blond-haired, deer-eyed, fashion plate--"

"That's enough! You are not an hysterical girl. Sit down.... I can't understand this, John. I thought--"

The two men looked at each other, a long look in which distrust at least was faced and ended. The excited flush, died out of John's cheek.

He looked weary and shame-faced.

"I thought she loved you," said Spence simply.

The doctor's eyes fell. It was his honest admission that he, too, had thought this possible.

"Even now," went on the professor haltingly, "I can-not believe ...

it doesn't seem possible ... me? ... John, does the letter mean that Desire loves me?"

John Rogers nodded, turning away.

Silence fell between them.

"What will you do--about the other?" asked the doctor presently.

"What other? There is no other. I loved Desire from the very first night I saw her. I didn't know it, then. It was all new. And," with a bitter smile, "so different from what one expects. Mary was never any-thing but the figure of straw I told you of. I thought," naively, "that Desire had forgotten Mary."

"Did you?" said John. "Why man, the woman doesn't live who would forget! And Miss Davis filled the bill to the last item--even the name 'Mary'."

"Oh what a pal was M-Mary!" croaked Yorick obligingly.

"The bird, too!" said John. "Everyone doing his little best to sustain the illusion--even, if I am any judge, the lady herself."

But Benis Spence had never wasted time upon the lady herself. And he did not begin now. With a face which had suddenly become years younger he was searching frantically in his desk for the transcontinental time-table.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

The train crawled.

Although it was a fast express whose speed might well provoke the admiration of travellers, in one traveller it provoked nothing save grim endurance. Beside the consuming impatience of Benis Hamilton Spence, its best effort was a little thing. When it slowed, he fidgeted, when it stopped he fumed. He wanted to get out and push it.

Five days--four--three--two--a day and a half--the vastness of the s.p.a.ces over which it must carry him grew endless as his mind continually tried to span them. He felt a distinct grievance that any country should be so wide.

"Making good time!" said a genial person, travelling in the tobacco trade. The professor eyed him with suspicion, as a man deranged by optimism.

The train crawled.

Spence removed his eyes from the pa.s.sing landscape and tried to forget how slowly it was pa.s.sing. He saw himself at the end of his journey. He saw Desire. He saw a grudging moment, or second perhaps, devoted to explanation. And then--How happy they were going to be! (If the train would only forget to stop at stations it might get somewhere.) How wonderful it would be to feel the empty world grow full again! To raise one's eyes, just casually, and to see--Desire. To speak, in just one's ordinary voice, and to know she heard. To stretch out one's hand and feel that she was there. (What were they doing now? Putting on more cars? Outrageous!) He would even write that book presently, when he got around to it. (When one felt sure one could write.) But first they would go away, just he and she, east of the sun and west of the moon.

They would sit together somewhere, as they used to sit on the sun-warmed gra.s.s at Friendly Bay, and say nothing at all.... How nearly they had missed it ... but it would be all right now. Love, whom they had both denied, had both given and forgiven. It would be all right, it must be all right, now! (But how the train crawled.)

Poor John, poor old Bones! What a blow it had been for him. Although he should certainly have had more sense than to fancy--Well, of course, a man can fancy anything it he wants it badly enough. Spence was honestly sorry for John--that is, he would be when he had time to consider John's case. But John, too, would be all right presently. (Why under heaven do trains need to wait ten minutes while silly people walk on platforms without hats?) John would marry a nice girl. Not a girl like Desire--not that type of girl at all. Someone quite different, but nice. A fair girl, like that nurse he had had in his office. John might be very happy with a wife like that ...

It was not until the fourth night out that the professor remembered the packet from Li Ho. It had loomed so small among the events of that day fof revelations that he had completely forgotten it. He did not even remember putting it in his pocket--but there it was, still unopened, and promising some slight distraction from the wearying contemplation of the crawling train. It would shut out, too, the annoyance of the tobacco traveller, smoking with an offensive leisureliness, and declaring, in defiance of all feeling, that they were "Sharp on time and going some!"

With a reviving interest in something outside the time-table, Spence cut the string and opened the yellow packet. A small note-book fell out and a letter--two letters, and one of them in the unmistakable writing of Li Ho him-self. This latter, the professor opened first.

"Honorable Spence and Esteemed Professor, dear Sir," wrote Li Ho.

"Permit felicity to include book belong departed parent of valued wife.

Deceased lady write as per day. Li Ho extract and think proper missy to know. Honorable Boss head much loony. Secure that missy remain removed if desiring safety. Belong much danger here since married as per also enclosed. Exalted self be insignificantly warned by person of no intelligence, Li Ho."

Farther down, in a corner of the sheet was this sentence:

"Permit to notably add that respected lady departed life Jan. 14."

Li Ho had certainly surpa.s.sed himself. The bewildered professor forgot about the time-table entirely. What Chinese meaning lay behind this jumble of dictionary words? That they were not used at haphazard Spence knew. Li Ho had some distinct meaning to convey--had indeed already conveyed it in the one outstanding word "danger." For an instant the professor's mind sickened with that weakness which had been his dreadful legacy of war. But it pa.s.sed immediately. Something stronger, deeper in, took quiet command. Desire was in danger! Shock has a way at times of giving back what shock has taken.--Spence became his own man once more--cool, ready.

With infinite care he went over the Chinaman's disjointed sentences.

They had been written under stress.

That much presented no difficulty. Li Ho, the imperturbable, had permitted himself a fit of nerves ... Something must have happened.

Something new. Something which threatened a danger not sufficiently emphasized before. In his former letter Li Ho had indeed intimated that a return was not desirable, but it had been an intimation based on general principles only. This was different. This had all the marks of urgent warning. "No more safe being married as per inclosed." This cryptic remark might mean that further enlightenment was to be sought in the enclosures.

Spence picked up the second letter. It was addressed to Dr. Herbert Farr at Vancouver, and was merely a formal notice from a firm of English solicitors--post-marked London--a well-known firm, probably, from the address on their letterhead.

"Dr. Herbert Farr, Vancouver, B. C.

Dear Sir:

As executors in the estate of Mrs. Henry Strangeways we beg to inform you that the allowance paid to you for the maintenance of Miss Desire Farr is hereby discontinued. This action is taken under the terms of our late clients will,--whereby such allowance ceases upon the marriage of the said Desire Farr or her voluntary removal from your roof and care.

Obediently yours, Hervey & Ellis."

The professor whistled. Here was enlightenment indeed! A very sufficient explanation of the old man's grim determination to block any self-dependence on Desire's part which would mean "removal from" his "care." Here was someone paying a steady (and perhaps a fat) allowance for the young girl's maintenance--someone of whom she herself had certainly never heard and of whose bounty she remained completely ignorant. It was easy enough now to follow Li Ho's reasoning. If it was for this allowance, and this alone, that the old doctor had kept Desire with him, long after her presence had become a matter of indifference or even of distaste, the ending of the allowance meant also the ending of his tolerance. "No more safe, being married." The difference, in Li Ho's opinion, was all the difference between comparative safety and real danger. Money! As long as Desire had meant money there had been an instinct in the old scoundrel which, even in his moon-devil fits, had protected the goose which laid the golden eggs. But now--now this inhibition was removed, Desire, no longer valuable, was no longer safeguarded. And who could tell what added grudge of rage and vengeance might be darkly harbored in the depths of that crafty and unbalanced mind?

And Desire, unwarned, was even now almost within the madman's reach....

Spence sternly refused to think of this ... there was time yet ...