Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/439

THE PAPERS them, he ruled, immortal, the night; they were far beneath, and he now transcended their world; but a sense of relief, of escape, of the light, still unquenched, of their old irony, made them stand there face to face. There was more between them now than there had ever been, but it had ceased to separate them, it sustained them in fact like a deep water on which they floated closer. Still, however, there was something Maud needed. "It had been all the while worked?"

"Ah, not, before God—since I lost sight of him—by me."

"Then by himself?"

"I dare say. But there are plenty for him. He's beyond me."

"But you thought," she said, "it would be so. You thought," she declared, "something."

Bight hesitated. "I thought it would be great if he could. And as he could—why, it is great. But all the same I too was sold. I am sold. That's why I give up."

"Then it's why I do. We must do something," she smiled at him, "that requires less cleverness."

"We must love each other," said Howard Bight.

"But can we live by that?"

He thought again; then he decided. "Yes."

"Ah," Maud amended, "we must be 'littery.' We've now got stuff."

"For the dear old ply, for the rattling good tile? Ah, they take better stuff than this—though this too is good."

"Yes," she granted on reflection, "this is good, but it has bad holes. Who was the dead man in the locked hotel room?"

"Oh, I don't mean that. That," said Bight, "he'll splendidly explain."

"But how?"

"Why, in the Papers. To-morrow." 427