Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/252

 that way—what wild, insane, pitiful folly was this that was possessing him?

A man who is lost in the woods, it is said, in his endeavour to find his way, walks in a circle; and so it was with Varge now—in a mental sense. He had come back to the same point he had left that afternoon when he had made his dash for liberty from the penitentiary—the same conditions, the same considerations faced him now as had faced him then—and the same conclusions must prevail—he could not stay—he must go on and on—somewhere,—it did not matter much now where—somewhere.

And yet a day or two—or three or four—what could it matter? They would be all he could ever hope to have, all that—but he was shielding himself behind her, putting risk upon her even now, leaning very heavily upon her, imposing on her generosity, her chivalry.

He straightened suddenly and stood up away from the rock against which he had been leaning. It was early evening and he was upon the beach. The sea in tumult still lashed and flung itself madly against the shore, but here, protected by a jutting ledge of rock at the foot of the pathway from the cliff, it was calm and sheltered compared with the open beach a few feet away, where the huge billows broke with such thunderous reverberations as to subdue the roar of the wind to but a plaintive note running through the wild harmony of Nature's war-song in a minor key.

An hour before she had come to the coast-guard station with a quaint, elderly little lady, her aunt, ostensibly to bring jellies and various delicacies for the invalided Jonah Sully, and professing, at least, great