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Page 75
As the clouds break, revealing the blue of the heavens, so Dick's
memory came back to him. He shrank from the man at his side.
"Well?" he asked, as he stared at his betrayer.
Jack gazed fixedly ahead. He dared not look in the face of him
he had wronged so bitterly.
"She wants you," he said, in a voice void of all emotion.
"Who wants me?" asked Dick, after a pause.
"Echo."
"Your wife?" gritted Dick. He fingered his gun as he spoke.
Huskily Jack replied: "Yes."
Bitter thoughts filled the mind of one; the other had schooled
himself to make atonement. For the wrong he had done, Jack was
ready to offer his life. He had endured the full measure of his
sufferings. The hour of his delivery was at hand. Hard as it
was to die in the midglory of manhood, it was easier to end it
all here and now, than to live unloved by Echo, hated by Dick,
despised by himself.
"She sent me to find you. 'Bring him back to me.' That's what
she said," Jack cried, in his agony.
"Your wife--she said that?" faltered Dick.
Fiercely in his torture Jack answered: "Yes--my wife--my wife
said it. 'Bring him back to me.'"
"Back?" Dick paused. "Back to what?" he asked himself. "She's
your wife, isn't she?" he demanded.
"That's what the law says," answered Jack.
With the thought of the evening in the garden when he heard Jack
and Echo pronounced man and wife surging over him, Dick murmured:
"What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."
"That's what the Book says," answered Jack. "But when hands
alone are joined and hearts are asunder, it can't go on record as
the work of God."
Dick bowed his head in his hands. "I don't understand."
Stubbornly Jack pursued his message to Dick. "She doesn't love
me. I thought I had won her, but she married me with your image
in her heart. She married me, yet all the while you were the man
she loved--you--you--and in the end I found it out."
Jack's voice sank almost into a whisper as he finished his
revelation to Dick, who raised his head and cried: "And yet she
broke her faith with me--"
Jack arose in his misery. His task was harder than he expected.
Dick was forcing him to tell all without concealing even the
smallest trifle of his shame.
"She thought--you were dead. I never told her otherwise. I lied
to her--I lied to her."
"She never knew?" asked Dick joyfully. "The letter--?"
"I never gave it to her," answered Jack simply.
Dick leaped to his feet, pulling his revolver from his holster.
"And I thought her false to her trust!" He aimed his gun at
Payson's heart. "I ought to kill you for this!"
Jack spread out his arms and calmly replied: "I'm ready."
Dick dropped his gun and slipped it into the holster with a
gesture of despair. "But it's too late now, too late!"
In his eagerness to tell Dick the way he had solved the problem,
Jack spoke nervously and quickly. "No, it isn't too late.
There's one way out of this--one way in which I can atone for the
wrong I've done you both, and I stand ready to make that
atonement. It is your right to kill me, but it is better that
you go back to her without my blood on your hands--"
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