Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/298

 There, for instance, sat Adam John, waiting to be sentenced for murder, with not a chance in the world now to escape it, yet stolid, unmoving upon his bed, eyes fixed, lips clasped, scarce a shoulder-shrug for hours at a time—never once a sign, while he, Henry Harrington, with every chance—absurdly held in duress upon a ridiculous charge that must fall the moment it confronted the light of day in open court—he was restless, turning, twisting, tramping to and fro in his cell like a caged beast, grumbling, muttering, raging, threatening to tear his narrow prison to pieces with the puny grippings of his own hands. He—he was different. Lahleet shouldn't neglect him this way. It was inconsiderate of her, when she had been coming and going for him so readily, serving him so enormously, appearing intuitively in the moments when he needed her most—and now when he had got the habit of it, accepting her service almost as a matter of course; when he depended on her, leaned on her—why, all at once to cease to come was surely inconsiderate. And yet, he told himself, that was the faint strain of the Indian in her, which colored so many of her actions so tremendously.

As for Billie, he still believed that she would come. "What's keeping her?" he would ask himself, over and over. "What's keeping her? She . . . It can't be easy for her to stay away from me like this. I've got to get out of here! God, it must be awful for her. Poor, dear girl. I've got to get out of here as much to lift the pressure on her as on me."

And there was a great deal of pressure upon Billie—a great deal. Endless and distracting as the days were to Henry, they were longer and almost more dis-