"I see that you are going to do something for which you will never, never be able to forgive yourself," she said gravely. "You are going to make use of those papers?"
He sat down and stared gloomily at her. "Patricia, I have taken a solemn oath. The law which I have sworn to uphold is greater than--" He was going to say, "greater than any man's claim for immunity," but she finished the sentence otherwise for him.
"Is greater than your love for your father. I suppose I ought to be able to understand that, but I am not. Evan, you can't do it--you mustn't do it; every drop of that father's blood in your veins ought to cry out against it."
"Ah!" he exclaimed with a sudden indrawing of his breath. "You don't know what it is costing me!"
"Truly, I don't," she asserted calmly. "Your father is a great and good man. If he had a daughter instead of a son, she would know and understand." Then, in a quick and generous upflash of feeling: "I wish he had a daughter--I wish I were she! I should try to show him that blood is thicker than water!"
"You wish--you were--his daughter? Do you realize what you are saying?" Then he went on brokenly: "_Don't_, Patricia, girl--for God's sake don't tempt me to do evil that good may come! Can't you understand how I am driven to do this thing--how every fibre of me is rebelling against the savage necessity? God knows, I'd give anything I am or hope to be if the necessity could be wiped out!"
"But I say you can not do it. You are a brave man, Evan; I know, because I have seen you tried. You mustn't turn cowardly now."
"Nor shall I!" he countered quickly. "But I don't understand."
"Don't you? Isn't it cowardly to strike this cruel blow in the dark? You _can't_ do this thing without giving your father the warning that you would give your bitterest enemy--you simply can't, and still be the man I have known and l--liked for two whole years!"
"Father's going to Wartrace this afternoon is merely an added twist of the thumb-screws," he protested in fresh wretchedness. "I should have gone to him first--I meant to go to him first. From what you said over the telephone this morning I gathered that the Wartrace trip was to be made on my account, and I hoped, I believed, it would be given up when I refused to go. Now I can not see him first; the time is too short. That which is to be done must be done to-day--this afternoon; otherwise it will be too late. Don't make it any harder for me, Patricia. Surely you can see how hard it is, in any case!"