"
"We're as safe," answered Maxine, with a kind of desperate calmness, "as
if we were in a house with gunpowder stored underneath, and a train laid
to fire it. But"--she broke off bitterly, "why do I say '_we_'. To you
all this can be no more than a regret, a worry."
"You know that's not just!" I reproached her. "I'm in this with you now,
heart and soul. I spoke no more than the truth when I said I'd give my
life, if necessary, to redeem my failure. Already I've given something,
but--"
"What have you given?" she caught me up quickly.
"My hope of happiness with a girl I love as you love du Laurier," I
answered; then regretted my words and would have taken them back if I
could, for she had a heavy enough burden to bear already, without
helping me bear mine.
"I don't understand," she said.
"Don't think of it. You can do nothing; and I don't grudge the
sacrifice--or anything," I hurried on.
"Yet I will think of it, if I ever have time to think of anything beyond
this tangle. But now, it must be _au revoir_. Save me, save Raoul, if
you can, Ivor. What you can do, I don't know. I'm groping in darkness.
Yet you're my one hope.
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