urtained her mind from him dropped away. He
found himself looking down into eyes full of fire and shadow; and eager
lips; and the fiber of her voice made her whole body tremble.

"It isn't Jack?" she pleaded. "It isn't Jack that you've fought with?"

And he said to himself: "She loves him with all her heart and soul!"

"It is he," said Donnegan in an agony. Pain may be like a fire that
tempers some strong men; and now Donnegan, because he was in torment,
smiled, and his eye was as cold as steel.

The girl flung away his hands.

"You bought murderer!" she cried at him.

"He is not dead."

"But you shot him down!"

"He attacked me; it was self-defense."

She broke into a low-pitched, mirthless laughter. Where was the
filmy-eyed girl he had known? The laughter broke off short--like a sob.

"Don't you suppose I've known?" she said. "That I've read my father?
That I knew he was sending a bloodhound when he sent you? But, oh, I
thought you had a touch of the other thing!"

He cringed under her tone.

"I'll bring him to you," said Donnegan desperately. "I'll bring him here
so that you can take care of him."

"You'll take him away from Lord Nick--and Lebrun--and the rest?" And it
was the cold smile of her father with which she mocked him.

"I'll do it."

"You play a deep game," said the girl bitterly. "Why would you do it?"

"Because," said Donnegan faintly. "I love you."

Her hand had been on the knob of the door; now she twitched it open and
was gone; and the last that Donnegan saw was the width of the startled
eyes.

"As if I were a leper," muttered Donnegan. "By heaven, she looked at me
as if I were unclean!"

But once outside the door, the girl stood with both hands pressed to her
face, stunned. When she dropped them, they folded against her breast,
and her face tipped up.

Even by starlight, had Donnegan been there to look, he would have seen
the divinity which comes in the face of a woman when she loves.

26

Had he been there to see, even in the darkness he would have known, and
he could have crossed the distance between their lives with a single
step, and taken her into his heart. But he did not see. He had thrown
himself upon his bunk and lay face down, his arms stretched rigidly out
before him, his teeth set, his eyes closed.

For what Donnegan had wanted in the world, he had taken; by force when
he could, by subtlety when he must. And now, what he wanted most of all
was gone fro