Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/268

 going to put you where I ought to have put you two years ago!"

"Jim," said the woman, white-lipped but compelling herself to calmness, "don't go on like this! Don't! You're only making it worse, every minute!"

"Making what worse?" demanded Blake.

"The whole thing. It was a mistake, from the first. I could have told you that. But you did then what you 're trying to do now. And see what you 've lost by it!"

"What have I lost by it?"

"You 've lost everything," she answered, and her voice was thin with misery. "Everything—just as they counted on your doing, just as they expected!"

"As who expected?"

"As Copeland and the others expected when they sent you out on a blind trail."

"I was n't sent out on a blind trail."

"But you found nothing when you went out. Surely you remember that."

It seemed like going back to another world,