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Page 51
As this thing grew in him, a black and foreboding thunderstorm on the
horizon of his dreams, an impulse which he did not resist dragged him
more and more frequently down to the old home, and Mary Josephine was
always with him. They let no one know of these visits. And they talked
about John Keith, and in Mary Josephine's eyes he saw more than once a
soft and starry glow of understanding. She loved the memory of this man
because he, her brother, had loved him. And after these hours came the
nights when truth, smiling at him, flung aside its mask and stood a
grinning specter, and he measured to the depths the falseness of his
triumph. His comfort was the thought that she knew. Whatever happened,
she would know what John Keith had been. For he, John Keith, had told
her. So much of the truth had he lived.
He fought against the new strain that was descending upon him slowly
and steadily as the days passed. He could not but see the new light
that had grown in Miriam Kirkstone's eyes. At times it was more than a
dawn of hope. It was almost certainty. She had faith in him, faith in
his promise to her, in his power to fight, his strength to win. Her
growing friendship with Mary Josephine accentuated this, inspiring her
at times almost to a point of conviction, for Mary Josephine's
confidence in him was a passion. Even McDowell, primarily a fighter of
his own battles, cautious and suspicious, had faith in him while he
waited for Shan Tung. It was this blind belief in him that depressed
him more than all else, for he knew that victory for himself must be
based more or less on deceit and treachery. For the first time he heard
Miriam laugh with Mary Josephine; he saw the gold and the brown head
together out in the sun; he saw her face shining with a light that he
had never seen there before, and then, when he came upon them, their
faces were turned to him, and his heart bled even as he smiled and held
out his hands to Mary Josephine. They trusted him, and he was a liar, a
hypocrite, a Pharisee.
On the ninth day he had finished supper with Mary Josephine when the
telephone rang. He rose to answer it. It was Miriam Kirkstone.
"He has returned," she said.
That was all. The words were in a choking voice. He answered and hung
up the receiver. He knew a change had come into his face when he turned
to Mary Josephine. He steeled himself to a composure that drew a
questioning tenseness into her face. Gently he stroked her soft hair,
explaining that Shan Tung had returned and that he was going to see
him. In his bedroom he strapped his Service automatic under his coat.
At the door, ready to go, he paused. Mary Josephine came to him and put
her hands to his shoulders. A strange unrest was in her eyes, a
question which she did not ask.
Something whispered to him that it was the last time. Whatever happened
now, tonight must leave him clean. His arms went around her, he drew
her close against his breast, and for a space he held her there,
looking into her eyes.
"You love me?" he asked softly.
"More than anything else in the world," she whispered.
"Kiss me, Mary Josephine."
Her lips pressed to his.
He released her from his arms, slowly, lingeringly.
After that she stood in the lighted doorway, watching him, until he
disappeared in the gloom of the slope. She called good-by, and he
answered her. The door closed.
And he went down into the valley, a hand of foreboding gripping at his
heart.
XX
With a face out of which all color had fled, and eyes filled with the
ghosts of a new horror, Miriam Kirkstone stood before Keith in the big
room in the house on the hill.
"He was here--ten minutes," she said, and her voice was as if she was
forcing it out of a part of her that was dead and cold. It was
lifeless, emotionless, a living voice and yet strange with the chill of
death. "In those ten minutes he told me--that! If you fail--"
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