Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/249

 "I love you, Helena—I love you. Do you understand—it's you! You—I love you!"

"You love me!"—she retreated from him, but her head was raised now, and her voice rang with a bitterness cold as the touch of death. "Love! What do you know of love! We talk plain, you say. Love—love for me! Passion, vice, lust, sin—and, oh, my God, degradation and misery and shame—love! Love! That is your love!"

He stood for a moment and stared at her again—and her face was as pallid ivory. And something seemed to daze him, and he brushed his hand across his eyes—the logic was faulty, torn and pitiful, and he groped after the flaw.

"It's—it's your love as well as mine," he said in a stumbling way—then his brain flashed quick into action. "My love—what other love have you known but that?" he cried. "It's our love—the love we have known together—and we're going back to it—see? I've had enough of this. You pack your trunks—and pack them quick! We're going to beat it out of here! We're going back to our—love. We're going back where I don't have to sit around like a puling fool and watch Thornton chuck you under the chin—we're going where he'll want a tombstone If he ever shows his face there. You thought the game would hold me to the last jackpot—did you? Well, I've got enough—and there's no game big enough to make me stand for this. That looks like love—doesn't it?" He burst again into a