The Just and the Unjust Part 21

He crushed her in his arms until his muscles were tense. She did not struggle for release, but abandoned herself without a word to the emotion of the moment. Her head thrown back, her cheeks pale, her full lips smiling, she gazed up into his face with eyes burning with sudden fire.

"How I love you!" he whispered.

She slipped her arms about his neck with a little cry of ecstasy.

"Oh, Marsh, I have been foolish, too, but this is the place for me--my place--against your very heart!" she said softly.

For a long minute Langham held her so, and then tortured by sudden memory he came back sharply to the actualities. His arms dropped from about her.

"What is it, dear?" she asked.

She was not yet ready to pa.s.s from the pa.s.sion of that moment.

"It's too late--" he muttered brokenly.

"No, dear, it's not too late, we have only been a little foolish. Of course we can go back; of course we can begin all over, and we know now what to avoid; that was it, we didn't know before, we were ignorant of ourselves--of each other. Why, don't you see, we are only just beginning to live, dear--you must have faith!" and again her arms encircled him.

"But you don't know--" he stammered.

"Don't know what, dear?"

He dropped into his chair, and she sank on her knees at his side. A horrible black abyss into which he was falling, seemed to open at his feet. Her hands were the only ones that could draw him back and save him.

"Don't know what?" she repeated.

The mystery of his man's nature, with its mingled strength and weakness, was something she could not resist.

"Does it ever do any good to pray, I wonder?" he gasped.

"I wonder, too!" she echoed breathlessly.

He laughed.

"What rot I'm talking!" he said.

"What is it that is wrong, Marsh?"

"Nothing--nothing--I can't tell you--"

"You can tell me anything, I would always understand--always, dear.

Prove to me that our love is everything; take me back into your confidence!"

"No," he gasped hoa.r.s.ely. "I can't tell you--you'd hate me if I did; you'd never forget--you couldn't!"

She turned her eyes on him in breathless inquiry.

"I would--I promise you now! Marsh, I promise you, can't you believe--?"

He shook his head and gazed somberly into her eyes. She rested her cheek against the back of his hand where it lay on the arm of his chair. There was a long silence.

"But what is it, Marsh? What has happened?"

"Nothing's happened," he said at last. "I'm a bit worried, that's all, about myself--my debts--my extravagance; isn't that enough to upset me?

Every one's crowding me!"

There was another long pause. Evelyn sighed softly; she felt that they were coming back too swiftly to the every-day concerns of life.

"I'm worried, too, about North!" Langham said presently.

"About North--what about North?"

"They are going to bring him back; didn't you know he had gone West? He went last night."

"But _who_ is going to bring him back?"

"They want him as a witness in the McBride case. They--Moxlow, that is--seems to think he knows something that may be of importance. He's a crazy fool, with his notions!"

"But North--" Evelyn began.

"It may make a lot of trouble for him. They are going to bring him back as a witness, and unless he gives a pretty good account of himself, Moxlow's scheme is to try and hold him--"

"What do you mean by a good account of himself?"

"He'll, have to be able to tell just where he was between half past five and six o'clock last night; that's when the murder was committed, according to Taylor."

"Do you mean he's suspected, Marsh? But he couldn't have done it!" she cried.

"How do you know?" he asked quickly.

"Why, I was there--"

"Where?"

"With him--"

"Here--was he here?" A great load seemed lifted from him.

She was silent.

"He was here between five and six?" he repeated. He glanced at her sharply. "Why don't you answer me?"

"No, he was not here," she said slowly.

"Where was he, then?" he demanded. "What's the secret, anyhow?"

"Marsh, I'm going to tell you something," she said slowly. "Nothing shall stand between our perfect understanding, our perfect trust for the future. You know I have been none too happy for the last year--I don't reproach you--but we had gotten very far apart somehow. I've never been really bad--I've been your true and faithful wife, dear, always--always, but--you had made me very unhappy--" She felt him s.h.i.+ver. "And I am not a very wise or settled person--and we haven't any children to keep me steady--"

"Thank G.o.d!" the man muttered hoa.r.s.ely under his breath.