Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/375

Rh “And still you won’t deny it,” persisted the girl. “I am ready to take your word—yet you will not give it.”

“What’s the use?” he asked. “What difference could it make—even supposing you believed me?”

“All the difference to me,” was the quick but low reply; “it would alter everything —everything. Can’t you see that it must?”

“No; it is too late to alter anything at all.”

Yet his voice shook in its turn.

“Too late? Too late?” cried the girl wildly. “Nothing is too late—if you are innocent. Speak, Tom! Why don’t you speak? Oh, Tom, it would alter all our lives … yet you will not speak!”

“Because I cannot!” he cried out. “Because I—I am not an innocent man. I am not—I am not—I am not! And now leave me; leave me, I say, for God’s sake! Never you pity me again!”

Almost from a shout his voice died down to a whisper; the last words were hardly audible outside. But they were followed by a silence so heavy that Peggy O’Brien heard herself breathing, and thought she must be heard within. And then came the sound of light, unsteady steps retreating; and nothing more; not another sound within.

The silence appalled Peggy. At last, when she could no longer bear it, she crept over the soft sand to the mouth of the shed, and peered round the corner. He was standing within as the other woman had left him—he had never stirred. His open hands were still extended in some unfinished gesture. A glimmer of sunshine glanced off the waters and pointed the cruel contrast between the lined face and the yellow hair thrown proudly back from it: the one so aged, the other