Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/298

 She raised her head. "I told him that I—hated him"

"Oh, oh"

She knelt back on her heels.

"It was a dreadful thing to say, wasn't it? That's why I ran away. I couldn't stand it. I knew it was a thing no man—could—forgive"

I smoothed her hair and rocked her back and forth while she cried. It was strange how much of a child she seemed to me. And I was only the wife of a country grocer and lived over the store, and she was the wife of a man whose name was known from east to west, and all around the world. But you see she hadn't learned to live. Neither have I, really. But Billy has taught me a lot.

I think it was a comfort for her to feel that she had confided in me. But she made me promise that whatever happened I wouldn't let him know.

"Unless I—die," she said, and she was as white as a lily, "unless I die, and then you can—set him—free"

Billy was sorry that I had promised. "Somehow I feel responsible, sweetheart, and I'll bet her poor husband is almost crazy."

"Would you be, Billy?"

He caught me to him so quickly that he almost shook the breath out of me. "Don't ask a thing like that," he said, and his voice didn't sound like 292