From the Housetops Part 45

"Go on," she said, her heart standing still. "You can at least _say_ it to me. I don't ask for anything more."

"But why say it?" he cried out bitterly. "Will it help matters in the least for me to confess that I am weak and-"

She laughed aloud, unable to resist the nervous excitement that thrilled her. "Weak? You weak? Look back and see if you can find a single thing to prove that you are weak. You needn't be afraid. You are strong enough to keep me in my place. You cannot put yourself in jeopardy by completing what you started out to say. 'If it were not for the one terrible thing that lies between us, I could-I could-' Well, what could you do? Overlook my treachery? Forget that I did an even more terrible thing than you did?

Forgive me and take me back and trust me all over again? Is that what you would have said to me?"

"That is what I might have said," he admitted, almost savagely, "if I had not come to my senses in time."

Her eyes softened. The love-light glowed in their depths. "I am not as I was two years ago, Braden," she said. "I'd like you to know that, at least."

"I dare say that is quite true," he said harshly. "You got what you went after and now that you've got it you can very comfortably repent."

She winced. "I am not repenting."

"Would you be willing to give up all that you gained out of that transaction and go back to where my grandfather found you?" he demanded?

"Do you expect me to lie to you?" she asked with startling candour.

"No. I know you will not lie."

"Would it please you to have me say that I would willingly give up all that I gained?"

"I see what you mean. It would be a lie."

"Would it please you to have me give it all up?" she insisted.

He was thoughtful. "No," he said candidly. "You earned it, you are ent.i.tled to it. It is filthy, dirty money, but you earned it. You do not deny that it was your price. That's the long and the short of it."

"Will you let me confess something to you? Something that will make it all seem more despicable than before?"

"Good Lord, I don't see how that can be possible!"

"I did not expect to lose you, Braden, when I married Mr. Thorpe. I counted on you in the end. I was so sure of myself,-and of you. Wait! Let me finish. If I had dreamed that I was to lose you, I should not have married Mr. Thorpe. That makes it worse, doesn't it?" There was a note of appeal in her voice.

"Yes, yes,-it makes it worse," he groaned.

"I was young and-over-confident," she murmured. "I looked ahead to the day when I should be free again and you would be added to the-well, the gains.

Now you know the whole truth about me. I was counting on you, looking forward to you, even as I stood beside him and took the vows. You were always uppermost in my calculations. I never left you out of them. Even to this day, to this very moment, I continue to count on you. I shall never be able to put the hope out of my mind. I have tried it and failed. You may despise me if you will, but nothing can kill this mean little thing that lurks in here. I don't know what you will call it, Braden, but I call it loyalty to you."

"Loyalty! My G.o.d!" he cried out hoa.r.s.ely.

"Yes, loyalty," she cried. "Mean as I am, mean as I have been, I have never wavered an instant in my love for you. Oh, I'm not pleading for anything. I'm not begging. I don't ask for anything,-not even your good opinion. I am only telling you the truth. Mr. Thorpe knew it all. He knew that I loved you, and he knew that I counted on having you after he was out of the way. And here is something else that you never knew, or suspected. He believed that my love for you, my eagerness, my longing to be free to call you back again, would be the means of releasing him from the thing that was killing him. He counted on me to-I will put it as gently as I can-to free myself. I believe in my soul that he married me with that awful idea in his mind."

For a long time they were silent. Braden was staring at her, horror in his eyes. She remained standing before him, motionless. Lutie's nurse pa.s.sed through the little hall outside, but they did not see or hear her. A door closed softly; the faint crying of the baby went unheard.

"You are wrong there," he said at last, thickly. "I happen to know what his motives were, Anne."

"Oh, I know," she said wearily. "To prove to you how utterly worthless I am,-or was. Well, it may have been that. I hope it was. I would like to think it of him instead of the other thing. I would like to think of him as sacrificing himself for your sake, instead of planning to sacrifice me for his sake. It is a terrible thought, Braden. He begged me to give him those tablets, time and again. I-I couldn't have done that, not even with you as the prize." She shuddered.

A queer, indescribable chill ran through his veins. "Do you-have you ever thought that he may have held you out as a prize-for me?"

"You mean?" She went very white. "G.o.d above us, no! If I thought _that_, Braden, then there would be something lying between us, something that even such as I could not overcome."

"Just the same," he went on grimly, "he went to his death with a word of praise on his lips for you, Anne. He told me you were deserving of something better than the fate he had provided for you. He was sorry.

It-it may have been that he was pleading your cause, that-"

"I would like to think that of him," she cried eagerly, "even though his praise fell upon deaf ears."

She turned away from him and sank wearily into a chair. For a minute or two he stood there regarding her in silence. He was sorry for her. It had taken a good deal of courage to humble herself in his eyes, as she had done by her frank avowal.

"Is it any satisfaction to your pride, Anne," he said slowly, after deliberate thought, "to know that I love you and always will love you, in spite of everything?"

Her answer was a long time in coming, and it surprised him when it did come.

"If I had any pride left I should hate you for humbling it in that manner, Braden," she said, little red spots appearing on her cheeks. "I am not asking for your pity."

"I did not mean to-" he cried impulsively. For an instant he threw all restraint aside. The craving mastered him. He sprang forward.

She closed her eyes quickly, and held her breath.

He was almost at her side when he stopped short. Then she heard the rush of his feet and, the next instant, the banging of the hall door. He was gone! She opened her eyes slowly, and stared dully, hazily before her. For a long time she sat as one unconscious. The shock of realisation left her without the strength or the desire to move. Comprehension was slow in coming to her in the shock of disappointment. She could not realise that she was not in his arms. He had leaped forward to clasp her, she had felt his outstretched arms encircling her,-it was hard to believe that she sat there alone and that the ecstasy was not real.

Tears filled her eyes. She did not attempt to wipe them away. She could only stare, unblinking, at the closed door. Sobs were in her throat; she was first cold, then hot as with a fever.

Slowly her breath began to come again, and with it the sobs. Her body relaxed, she closed her eyes again and let her head fall back against the chair, and for many minutes she remained motionless, still with the weakness of one who has pa.s.sed through a great crisis.... Long afterward,-she did not know how long it was,-she laid her arms upon the window-sill at her side and buried her face on them. The sobs died away and the tears ceased flowing. Then she raised her eyes and stared down into the hot, crowded street far below. She looked upon sordid, cheap, ugly things down there, and she had been looking at paradise such a little while ago.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet. Her tall, glorious figure was extended to its full height, and her face was transformed with the light of exaltation.

A key grated noisily in the hall door. The next instant it swung violently open and her brother George strode in upon her,-big, clear-eyed, happy- faced and eager.

"h.e.l.lo!" he cried, stopping short. "I popped in early to-day. Matter of great importance to talk over with my heir. Wait a second, Anne. I'll be back-I say, what's the matter? You look posi-_tive_-ly as if you were on the point of bursting into grand opera. Going to sing?"

"I'm singing all over, Georgie,-all over, inside and out," she cried joyously.

"Gee whiz!" he gasped. "Has the baby begun to talk?"

CHAPTER XXV

She did not meet him again at Lutie's. Purposely, and with a cunning somewhat foreign to her s.e.x, she took good care that he should not be there when she made her daily visits. She made it an object to telephone every day, ostensibly to inquire about Lutie's condition, and she never failed to ask what the doctor had said. In that way she knew that he had made his visit and had left the apartment. She would then drive up into Harlem and sit happily with her sister-in-law and the baby, whom she adored with a fervour that surprised not only herself but the mother, whose ideas concerning Anne were undergoing a rapid and enduring reformation.

She was shocked and not a little disillusioned one day, however, when Lutie, now able to sit up and chatter to her heart's content, remarked, with a puzzled frown on her pretty brow:

"Dr. Braden must be terribly rushed with work nowadays, Anne. For the last week he has been coming here at the most unearthly hour in the morning, and dashing away like a shot just as soon as he can. Good gracious, we're hardly awake when he gets here. Never later than eight o'clock."