"
"You want me to see the man at once?"
"If you will."
"What is his name? I know of his accident and the circumstances."
She hesitated for an instant, then said, "He is called Draper--a trapper
and woodsman."
"But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All my arrangements are
made," he urged, his eyes holding hers, his passion swimming in his eyes
again.
"But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?" she pleaded,
unable now to meet his look, its mastery and its depth.
Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion that he could not
stay; but as suddenly self-reproach and shame filled her mind, and she
had challenged him so. But yet, what right had she to sacrifice this man
she loved to the perverted criminal who had spoiled her youth and taken
away from her every dear illusion of her life and heart? By every right
of justice and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry Meydon than if
she had never seen him. He had forfeited every claim upon her, dragged in
the mire her unspotted life--unspotted, for in all temptation, in her
defenceless position, she had kept the whole commandment; she had, while
at the mercy of her own temperament, fought her way through all, with a
weeping heart and laughing lips.
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