Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/386

 "Mr Cooley! Whatever it is?" said the nurse.

He looked at her with long, slow, dark looks.

"Statement of fact," he said, in his faint, husky voice.

"Don't excite yourself," pleaded the nurse. "You know it hurts you. Don't think about it, don't. Hadn't you perhaps best be left alone?"

"Yes, I'd better go," said Richard, rising.

"I want to say good-bye to you," said Kangaroo faintly, looking up at him with strange, beseeching eyes.

Richard, very pale at the gills, sat down again in the chair. Jack watched them both, scowling.

"Go out, nurse," whispered Kangaroo, touching her hand with his fingers, in a loving kind of motion. "I'm all right."

"Oh, Mr Cooley, don't fret, don't," she pleaded.

He watched her with dark, subtle, equivocal eyes, then glanced at the door. She went, obedient, and Jack followed her.

"Good-bye, Lovat!"? said Kangaroo in a whisper, turn-his face to Somers and reaching out his hand. Richard took the clammy, feeble hand. He did not speak. His lips were closed firmly, his face pale and proud looking. He looked back into Kangaroo's eyes, unconscious of what he saw. He was only isolated again in endurance. Grief, torture, shame, seethed low down in him. But his breast and shoulders and face were hard as if turned to rock. He had no choice.

"You've killed me. You've killed me, Lovat!" whispered Kangaroo. "Say good-bye to me. Say you love me now you've done it, and I won't hate you for it." The voice was weak and tense.

"But I haven't killed you, Kangaroo. I wouldn't be here holding your hand if I had. I'm only so sorry some other villain did such a thing." Richard spoke very gently, like a woman.

"Yes, you've killed me," whispered Kangaroo hoarsely.

Richard's face went colder, and he tried to disengage his hand. But the dying man clasped him with suddenly strong fingers.

"No, no," he said fiercely. "Don't leave me now. You must stay with me. I shan't be long—and I need you to be there."

There ensued a long silence. The corpse—for such it