Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/381

 She had the quiet assurance of authority, the poise of self-reliance and reserve force, but there was not a shade of triumph in her face, at the power with which her father had vested her.

There seemed not to be even heart beats in the tense silence while Kate sat with her eyes downcast, clinking, with her jewelled fingers, a bit of ice against the sides of her drinking glass. Even when she spoke finally she did not look up, but began in a low, even voice:

"A fable that I read long ago keeps coming to me tonight — the story of a king, powerful and cruel, who, when his time came to appear before the Great Judge, the single entry in his favor that the Recording Angel could find was the whim which had induced him when walking one day to have a pig that he saw suffering in the gutter put out of its misery.

"The story is applicable in that as I sit here I realize that in all the years I have been among you there is only one," she raised her eyes and indicated Teeters's empty chair, " who ever has done me the smallest disinterested kindness.

"Until I got beyond the need of it, I cannot remember one unselfish, friendly act, or, at a time when every man's hand was against me, one sympathetic word or look. It sounds incredible, but it is the truth. It seems the irony of Fate indeed that this decision, which means so much to you, should rest with me."

She stopped and lowered her eyes again to the glass which she twirled slowly as she deliberated, as if choosing the words which should most exactly express her thoughts.

She began again: "You will excuse me if I speak much of myself, but there is no other way to make clear what I have to say." She paused for a breathless moment, and went on: "We