There was no answer from the window, only the shaking of the old man's shoulders.
“Hawkins,” said John Bruce softly, “wouldn't it be very wonderful if you saved her, and saved yourself; and wonderful, too, to know the joy of your own daughter's love?”
The old man turned suddenly from the window, his arms stretched out before him as though in intense yearning; and there was something almost of nobility in the gray head held high on the bent shoulders, something of greatness in the old wrinkled face that seemed to exalt the worn and shabby clothes hanging so formlessly about him.
“Your promise, Hawkins,” said John Bruce in a low voice. “Will you promise?”
“Yes,” breathed the old man fiercely. “_Yes_--so help me, God! But”--he faltered suddenly--“but Paul-----”
“Ask Paul to come down here,” said John Bruce. “I have something to say to both of you--more than I have already said to you. I will answer for Paul.”
The old cab driver obeyed mechanically. He crossed the room and went out. John Bruce heard him mounting the stairs. Presently he returned, followed by the tall, straight, white-haired figure of Paul Veniza.
Paul Veniza turned sharply at the sound, and glanced gravely from one to the other. His eyebrows went up as he looked at John Bruce. John Bruce's face was set.
“What is the matter?” inquired Paul Veniza anxiously.
“I want you to listen first to a little story,” said John Bruce seriously--and in a few words he told Paul Veniza, as he had told Hawkins, of his love for Claire and the events of the night that had brought him there a wounded man. “And this afternoon,” John Bruce ended, “I asked Claire to marry me, and she told me she was going to marry Doctor Crang.”
Paul Veniza had listened with growing anxiety, casting troubled and uncertain glances the while at Hawkins.
“Hawkins has promised he will never drink again.”
Paul Veniza, with a sudden start, stared at Hawkins, and then a sort of kindly tolerance dawned in his face.
“My poor friend!” said Paul Veniza as though he were comforting a wayward child, and went over and laid his hand affectionately on Hawkins' arm.
“I have told Hawkins,” went on John Bruce, “that I love Claire, that I asked her to marry me; and Hawkins in turn has told me he is Claire's father, and how he brought her to you and Mrs. Veniza when she was a baby, and of the pledge he made you then. It is because I love Claire too that I feel I can speak now. You once told Hawkins how he could redeem his daughter. He wants to redeem her now. He has promised never to drink again.”