Page:Across the Stream.djvu/285

Rh "No, I'll confess," he said, "because I'm so pleased at having found you out. I've been having some quiet drinks up in my bedroom while you've been doing the same down here. What did you do with your bottles? I put mine in the lake. I say, that is funny, isn't it? But it's rather unsociable. Let's follow Germany's example, and call our treaty waste paper."

And Archie had laughed over that miserable sordid exposure, just as light-heartedly as he had laughed over the jolly innocent humours at Silorno, and, sick at heart, Jessie had left the two together with the bottle which there was no need to conceal any more.

She sat long at her window in a miserable state of horror and fear and agitation, now trying to persuade herself that she was taking these things too heavily—Helena had always told her she took things heavily—now letting her fears issue in terrible cohort and looking them in the face. It was her powerlessness to help that most tortured her, her fate of having to stand and watch while Archie pushed out ever farther, with delight and joy, on to the perilous seas. But now there was to her a reality about it all which she had never wholly felt before. Often she had told herself that she was imagining perils, but to-night, in the darkness and the quiet, she felt herself face to face with the grim, deadly facts. Spiritual and ghostly enemies were about, and next moment she had slid on to her knees. No words came: she tried just to open her heart to that light that surely shone through the evil that swarmed about her. Something, ever so faint, glimmered there, and presently she rose again with her soul fixed on that little spark shining within her. In any case, she must make every effort to help, instead of succumbing to her sense of powerlessness.

At that moment she heard light, swift footsteps on the stairs, and instantly her mind was made up, and she came out into the broad passage just as Archie was