Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/303

 "Janet says he did not intend to be seen when he came back to-night," Doctor Kreelmar went on presently. "A love that would impel him to take the risk he took for just a glimpse, a sight of her, is a love few men would be capable of. I told you that I thought I realised what all this meant better than you did—I think I do—because the shock to you has been greater and you are upset now. You said you did not know where he had been during the last half-hour when he left Janet to go to the bridge—I think I can tell you. He was somewhere alone—with his God. Janet was right—he has given himself up for her. It is not the man who would have suffered in the years to come, it is the woman—Janet. His love had brought him back once, and he had agreed to go with her; if that love had brought him back once when he did not know she loved him—you said she only told him so to-night—it would bring him back again a thousand times more surely when he knew she cared for him—and the next time he would not stop even where he stopped to-night. He took the only way he saw to save her from—himself. I am not a very big man. Rand, not big enough even to grasp it all—there is a great strength there, and a magnificent weakness, born of love, that enhances the strength, for the strongest man is the man who knows his weakness and shackles it at any cost. Rand"—he paused, and his voice broke a little—"Rand, I don't know how you feel about it—but I feel, somehow, that I'd like to be a better man."

It was a long time before the warden spoke. Neither man looked at the other—the warden's eyes were on the table—Doctor Kreelmar had risen impulsively from his