Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/325

 anything—anything in all the world, Nellie—you know I'll do it."

"I know—I know, Will." The woman glanced around apprehensively, as though she feared a listener. O'Rourke slouched in his chair, motionless and very miserable because he couldn't get away decently.

"I know; but there is no trouble, Will—really, there isn't. You'll come to-morrow—call to-morrow afternoon, won't you, and we can have a nice, long, comfortable talk, Will?"

"Why, yes; but you're not expecting anybody now?"

"No—no—but I'm very tired, and—and I must go to bed, now. You'll come to-morrow? Yes? And you'll go now, won't you, like a dear boy?"

Senet gazed full in her face. "I'll go—yes," he conceded, "because you want to get rid of me, Nellie. I—I haven't any right to resent it, I suppose. Good night." He wheeled abruptly and went directly down the walk to the street, without once looking back or even casting a sidelong glance at O'Rourke. The woman stood swaying for a moment, then darted into the hotel.

O'Rourke turned his eyes to the seas again; the mist was spreading, he observed—spreading and rising in silvery coils; Gibraltar was no longer visible. Only the footsteps of a man scrambing [sic] along the narrow street at the foot of the terrace broke the silence.

"There," said the Irishman to himself, "is a woman whose pardon I should ask. She is suffering, yes—but for another's sin, not her own. She's a good woman, if ever I knew one."

He swallowed the drink at his elbow. "Poor Senet!" he muttered, rising and going into the gambling salon of the Hôtel d'Angleterre.