She was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of
the pity of it. All the admiration she had ever felt for his strange
insouciance, his almost bravado-like coolness, his mastery over events,
seemed suddenly to resolve itself into more definite and more
clearly-comprehended emotion. It was the great pity of it all which
suddenly appealed to her. She leaned a little forward.
"You have called this our last evening," she whispered. "Tell me one thing,
won't you? Tell me why it must be?"
The softness in her eyes was unmistakable, and his own face for a moment
relaxed wonderfully. Again there was that gleam almost of tenderness in his
deep-blue eyes. Nevertheless, he shook his head.
"Whether I succeed or whether I fail," he said simply, "to-night ends our
associations. Don't you understand," he went on, "that if I pass from the
shadow of this danger, there is another more imminent, more certain?"
He hesitated for a single moment, and his voice, which had grown softer,
became suddenly almost musical. Katharine, who was listening intently,
realised like a flash that for the first moment the mask had fallen away.
"I have lived for many years with that other danger," he went on. "It has
lain like a shadow always in front of my path.
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