Eaton felt himself flushing again, as he looked at Harriet. Did she resent his having used her in that way? He saw only sympathy in her face.
"My daughter told me that she helped you to that extent," Santoine offered, "and I understood later what must have been your reason for asking her to take you out that night."
"When I reached the study," Eaton continued, "I found others already there. The light of an electric torch flashed on the face of one of them and I recognized the man as Latron--the man for whose murder I had been convicted and sentenced! Edith tells me that you know the rest."
There was silence in the room for several minutes. Santoine again felt for Eaton's hand and pressed it. "We've tired you out," he said. "You must rest."
"You must sleep, Hugh, if you can," Edith urged.
Eaton obediently closed his eyes, but opened them at once to look for Harriet. She had moved out of his line of vision.
Santoine rose; he stood an instant waiting for his daughter, then suddenly he comprehended that she was no longer in the room. "Mr. Hillward, I must ask your help," he said, and he went out with Hillward guiding him.
Eaton, turning anxiously on his pillow and looking about the room, saw no one but his sister. He had known when Harriet moved away from beside the bed; but he had not suspected that she was leaving the room. Now suddenly a great fear filled him.
"Why did Miss Santoine go away? Why did she go, Edith?" he questioned.
"You must sleep, Hugh," his sister answered only.
Harriet, when she slipped out of the room, had gone downstairs. She could not have forced herself to leave before she had heard Hugh's story, and she could not define definitely even to herself what the feeling had been that had made her leave as soon as he had finished; but she sensed the reason vaguely. Hugh had told her two days before, "I will come back to you as you have never known me yet"--and it had proved true. She had known him as a man in fear, constrained, carefully guarding himself against others and against betrayal by himself; a man to whom all the world seemed opposed; so that her sympathy--and afterward something more than her sympathy--had gone out to him. To that repressed and threatened man, she had told all she felt toward him, revealing her feelings with a frankness that would have been impossible except that she wanted him to know that she was ready to stand against the world with him.