Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/191

 Here he had her again beside him. Marjorie! And, as always, she surprised in him a wilder impulse than he had expected to feel, wilder even than he had hoped he might feel. Hers, hers he was; whatever would help her, he would do. He had not known how she had been hurt; Bill, having seen the change come upon her day after day, could not have appreciated. "How they've hurt you!" Gregg agonized with himself. "My darling, how they've hurt you!" But his dry lips uttered only the words, "I know."

"Wait for me, please, Gregg," she asked him. "I'll be back in a few minutes; just wait outside, please; don't go into the house."

She had come out with a sleeved cape over her dress and without a hat; she looked littler than usual in that big, loose cape; she was littler, Gregg thought, the buoyancy gone from her and, in its place, fear! Not fear alone; she had taken on, too, a nobler quality which he could not describe, something he had never felt in her before and which was the surprise inflaming hotter his rills of blood.

"Rinderfeld was just here in his car; he stopped before the house," Gregg said. "You knew that?"

"Yes."

"You came out to see him?"

"Yes; I sent for him."

At last Gregg let himself touch her, grasping her arm under the clumsy cape.

"I'll go with you to him. I think he's around the corner."

She looked up at him, but not yet was she thinking about him but of how he could aid her purpose. "Come to the door with me first," she asked. "Speak to mother and tell her we're going out together."