"Oh, yes you would, Nora. You had it in you. If I hadn't happened along some one else would. What we're goin' to be, we're goin' to be, I figure. I was only a lucky chance."
"Lucky," she repeated. "Lucky! God, Bruce, lucky for me!"
"Naw, lucky for me, Nora. Why, don't you know that every man likes to have some woman dependin' on him? It's in us to want some female woman lookin' to us for protection an' help. It tickled me to death to think I was helpin' you, when, all the time, I knew down in my heart, I was only an accident.''
"You can say that, Bruce, but you can't make me believe it."
They walked far, talking of the past, of her future, but not once did the conversation touch on Ann Lytton. Bayard kept away from it because of that privacy with which he had come to look on the affair, and the girl knew that his presence there in town after Ann's departure for the ranch could mean only that a crisis had been reached. With her woman's heart, her intuition, she was confident of what the outcome would be. And though she had given her all to help bring it about, she knew that the sound of it in speech would precipitate that self-revelation which she had avoided so long, at such cost.
"I'll see you again," she said, when they stood before the hotel and she was ready to enter for the night. "I'll see you again before I go, Bruce. And--I ... thank you ... thank you...."
She gripped his hand convulsively and lowered her head; then turned and ran quickly up the steps, for she would not let him see the emotion, nor let him hear uncertain words form on her lips.
In her last speech with him, Nora had lied; she had lied because she knew that to tell him she had packed her trunk and would leave on the morning train would bring thanks from him for what she had done for Ann Lytton; and Nora could not have stood this. From the man downstairs she had learned kindness, had learned that not all mistakes are sins, had learned that there is a judgment above that which denounces or commends by rule of thumb. He had set in her heart a desire to be possessed by him, had fed it unconsciously, had led her on and on to dream and plan; then, had unwittingly wrecked it. But he had made her too big, too fine, too gentle, to let jealousy control her for long. She had weakened just once, and that had served to set in Nora's heart a new resolve, a finer purpose than had ever found a place there before. And, as she stumbled up the narrow stairway, the tears scalding her cheeks, her soul was glad, was light, was happy, for she knew true greatness.