I could have done it easily."
"Why, then, didn't you?"
"It was for Diane's sake. I'm afraid I didn't think of you. I had put
you out of my mind."
"Well, if a man can be noble at the same time he's terrible, you've
been, Russ--I don't know how I feel. I'm sick and I can't think. I see,
though, what you saved Diane and Steele. Why, she's touching happiness
again, fearfully, yet really. Think of that! God only knows what you did
for Steele. If I judged it by his suffering as you lay there about to
die it would be beyond words to tell. But, Russ, you're pale and shaky
now. Hush! No more talk!"
With all my eyes and mind and heart and soul I watched to see if she
shrank from me. She was passive, yet tender as she smoothed my pillow
and moved my head. A dark abstraction hung over her, and it was so
strange, so foreign to her nature. No sensitiveness on earth could have
equaled mine at that moment. And I saw and felt and knew that she did
not shrink from me. Thought and feeling escaped me for a while. I dozed.
The old shadows floated to and fro.
When I awoke Steele and Diane had just come in. As he bent over me I
looked up into his keen gray eyes and there was no mask on my own as I
looked up to him.
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