ought to hate you, and all that sort of thing, don't you know, but for the life of me I'm not able!" and the speaker gave a dissatisfied sort of chuckle. "Perhaps it's the life out yonder; one gets used to giving and taking hard knocks and running all sorts of risks. It's part of the great game. I won't say but what if I'd come up with you at the Cape there'd have been a lively sort of reckoning between us; but somehow I can't call you down here at home when we've eaten each other's salt and been such uncommonly good friends."
He paused, and puffed on his cigar, as if to give Kane a chance to speak, but all the latter's old audacity had deserted him, and he paced slowly back and forth by Kick's side, his gaze clouded and his brain dulled.
"Perhaps it's on account of Stella," Dysart went on musingly, as if loath to cease wondering at his own pacific state of mind. "She's hard hit, Kane,—worse than any of us, I'm afraid. What's to be done?" stopping short in his walk and facing him.
Kane groaned and staggered, and would have fallen but for the help of a friendly tree-trunk, against which he leaned his hand heavily in an excess of bodily weakness and mental abandon.
"I won't insult you by asking if you love her," Rick went on. "It's plain to be seen the little woman loves you with all her heart and soul."
"Do not keep her from me!" burst from the tortured breast of the other. "I have no right to ask it, I know, but if I do not see her it will kill us both!"
"That's about it, I imagine," said Rick sententiously. "I'm up the same tree myself," he continued with a conscious laugh, "and I know how it would feel."
"Of course, I relinquish all claim to her," said Kane. "I know that's hopeless after what has happened; but"
"Now, look here, Kane," interrupted Rick. "I'll undertake to square Sir Arthur, and seeing that I'm the injured party I fancy he won't have much to say. Suppose Stella agrees to marry you,—in view of the facts you won't want to live in England?"
"The world is wide," answered Kane, raising his head, a gleam of hope new-born in his eyes. "I dare not ask you to be my friend, but I do ask you to trust me! I have had a bitter lesson, and I have paid dearly for my crime."
Like most healthy and sane English-speaking men, Richard Dysart hated heroics or anything approaching a scene. So he simply clapped the other on the shoulder and said bluffly:
"That's all right, old man! Good-by and good luck! Wait here and I'll send Stella to talk to you!" And whistling to his dogs, who had been nuzzling each other by the old lych-gate, Rich strode away into the fast-gathering dusk.
