第88章

"Yes," he said."Joan....She's done it," he added, no longer choosing his words."She's got me.She's in my blood.I'm insane about her.I follow her like a dog, leaping up at a kind word, slinking away with my tail between my legs when she orders me to heel.My God, it's hell! I'm as near madness as a poor devil of a dope fiend out of reach of his joy.I wish I'd never seen her.She's made me loathe myself.She's put me through every stage of humiliation.I'd rather be dead than endure this craving that's worse than a disease.You were right when you said that I'm ill.Iam ill.I'm horribly ill.I'm...I'm..."He stammered and his voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands.

And instantly, with the maternal spirit that goes with all true womanly love ablaze in her heart, Alice went to him and put her arms about his neck and drew his head down on her shoulder.

And he left it there, with tears.

A little later they sat down again side by side, holding hands.

As Hosack had told himself, and Gilbert had just said, things seemed to be coming to a head.At that moment Tootles was strung up to play her last card, Joan was being driven back by Harry from the cottage of "Mrs.Gray" and Martin, becalmed on the water, with an empty pipe between his teeth, was thinking about Joan.

Palgrave was comforted.The making of his confession was like having an abscess lanced.In his weakness, in his complete abandonment of affectation, he had never been so much of a man.

There was not to Alice, who had vision and sympathy, anything either strange or perverse in the fact that Gilbert had told his story and was not ashamed.Love had been and would remain the one big thing in her own life, the only thing that mattered, and so she could understand, even as she suffered, what this Great Emotion meant to Gilbert.She adopted his words in thinking it all over.They appealed to her as being exactly right.

She too was comforted, because she saw a chance that Gilbert, with the aid of the utmost tact and the most tender affection, might be drawn back to her and mended.She almost used Hosack's caustic expression "rescued." The word came into her mind but was instantly discarded because it was obvious that Joan, however impishly she had played with Gilbert, was unaffected.Angry as it made her to know that any girl could see in Gilbert merely a man with whom to fool she was supremely thankful that the complication was not as tragic as it might have been.So long as Joan held out.the ruin of her marriage was incomplete.Hope, therefore, gleamed like a distant light.Gilbert had gone back to youth.It seemed to her that she had better treat him as though he were very young and hurt.

"Dearest," she said, "I'm going to take you away.""Are you, Alice?"

"Yes.We will go on the yacht, and you shall read and sleep and get your strength back."He gave a queer laugh."You talk like a mother," he said, with a catch in his voice.

She went forward and kissed him passionately.

"I love you like a mother as well as a wife, my man," she whispered.

"Never forget that."

"You're,--you're a good woman, Alice; I'm not worthy of you, my dear."It pained her exquisitely to see him so humble....Wait until she met Joan.She should be made to pay the price for this! "Who cares?"had been her cry.How many others had she made to care?

"I'll go back to Mrs.Jekyll now," she went on, almost afraid that things were running too well to be true, "and stay at Southampton to-night.To-morrow I'll return to New York and have everything packed and ready by the time you join me there.And I'll send a telegram to Captain Stewart to expect us on Friday.Then we'll go to sea and be alone and get refreshment from the wide spaces and the clean air.""Just as you say," he said, patting her hand.He was terribly like a boy who had slipped and fallen.

Then she got up, nearer to a breakdown than ever before.It was such a queer reversal of their old positions.And in order that he shouldn't rise she put her hands on his shoulders and stood close to him so that his head was against her breast.

"God bless you, dearest boy," she said softly."Trust in me.Give all your troubles to me.I'm your wife, and I need them.They belong to me.They're mine.I took them all over when you gave me my ring."She lifted his face that was worn as from a consuming fire and kissed his unresponsive lips."Stay here," she added, "and I'll go back.To-morrow then, in New York."He echoed her."To-morrow then, in New York," and held her hand against his forehead.

Just once she looked back, saw him bent double and stopped.Aprophetic feeling that she was never to hear his voice again seized her in a cold grip,--but she shook it off and put a smile on her face with which to stand before the scandal-mongers.

And there stood Joan, looking as though she had seen a ghost.