"Yes... I... I got to Penrhyn in the morning and caught the early train... you know, the cheap one. I was lucky, wasn't I? I shouldn't have had money enough for the express."
"Do you mean that he turned you out on to the moor alone, at night, in the storm, with no money?"
"It was because I wouldn't answer his questions. Aunt Sarah gave me a few shillings that she had over from something. She cried so bitterly, poor thing. And I had half a sovereign. I was threepence short for the railway ticket, but I had some postage-stamps..."
"Where did you get that bruise on your forehead?" he interrupted. Her left temple was cut and swollen; the blow, an inch lower, might have killed her.
She hesitated a moment, then silently bared her right arm. It was stamped below the elbow with blue finger-marks.
"I... don't think he meant it," she said softly; and drew the sleeve down again.
"He struck you?" Jack asked in the same dead voice.
"He was trying to make me speak. I had refused to tell him... who the father is. He seemed to lose his senses bit by bit. He kept on repeating: 'Who?' and wrenching my arm harder and harder... Then Aunt Sarah tried to stop him... and he knocked me down..."
"There, that's enough."
She turned at the strange sound of her brother's voice; and looked at him. She had never seen before how he looked when he was angry; and the sight chilled her into silence.
"You'd better not tell me any more about uncle," he said presently, with his habitual quiet manner. "We came pretty near to killing each other once, you know; and I have you to look after now. Suppose we make a compact not to mention him again. I think I must get your bed ready now, dear; and tomorrow we'll talk over our plans."
"But where will you sleep if I take your room? "
"Here, on the sofa, of course. We'll fit in this way for a week or two, and then get other lodgings. As soon as you are well enough, you must see about some clothes."
"But, Jack, I can't stay here, on your hands. It's all very well for one night, but I must find some work to-morrow."
"Dearest, work is not so easy to find all at once; and you're not in a state to do it, if it were. Rest a few days and then well see."
"Oh, you don't understand! There are more than two months still... and when the time comes... Do you think they'll take me in at any hospital, Jack?"
He turned round, shaken with mortal fear.
"Molly, you're not going to leave me?"
"You wouldn't have me stay here and be a burden on you till the child is born? No, no; not for the world."
"Why not? Have they made you hate me so that you can't come to me when you want help?"
"You see, I came; I don't know why. I... thought, somehow, you wouldn't turn me away. If you had, I should have..."
"Do you think I have so many joys in life that I can afford to turn away the sunlight when it comes in at my door? Molly, Molly! I've had to live without you all these years. Now you're here, and your first thought is to go away again. I can't give you up. Stay till it's over, anyhow; if you must go then, at least I shall have had you for a little while."
"You want me, really? For yourself? Not just out of pity? I don't want anybody's pity."
He laughed, and clasped her in his arms.
"Then you'll stay?"
"Wait a minute!" She pushed him back, and her face grew suddenly hard. "If I am to stay with you, you must promise me never to ask who the man is, never to ask any questions at all."
"Molly, I shan't look a gift-horse in the mouth! If ever he takes you from me, I shall know him then; and if not..."
"That will never happen. He has forgotten me."
His eyes darkened again.
"Forgotten? And left you to bear it alone..."
"Stop!" she cried with gleaming eyes. "I love him."
He bent his head, silenced, but raging inwardly.
"You shall not say a word against him; it was my own choice. He wanted me, and I gave myself; I never haggled or bargained or asked that he should marry me. He has had his joy, and I pay the cost of it. Why not, if I'm content? It was a free gift."
She stopped and put her hand up to the bruised temple.
"Oh, this pain in my head! I'm half blind... Listen, Jack; if I am a coward at the end, and turn against him when I'm not my real self, you're to remember always that any thing I say will be a lie, I have nothing to complain of — nothing."
Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She threw her arms round his neck.
"See what a brute I am! I come to you like a starving dog begging for shelter; and when you take me in I do nothing but make conditions."
"My treasure, you shall make all the conditions you like if you'll only stay with me."
"Then let me make one more; a fearful one."
She took both his hands; her own were burning.
"Promise that if I die next May, and the child lives, you'll adopt it, kill it, — any thing you will; but save it from uncle somehow."
He kissed her forehead solemnly. "There was no need to ask that promise."
"It's one that you probably won't be called on to keep. There's not..."
She broke off; then finished the sentence deliberately. "Not much hope of that. We're frightfully strong, we Raymonds."
"And frightfully lonely too, sometimes. Keep alive if you can, Molly."
Her eyes were fixed upon him, wide and wistful.
"Are you so utterly alone? I thought... you had some friends."
"I have Theo. But Theo is..."
He left the sentence unfinished, and stared absently into the fire. Presently he recovered himself with a start.
"Molly, darling, how you shiver! What was I thinking of not to send you to bed at once!"
CHAPTER XIII
"Jack," said Molly, coming into the meagre little front room, "I wish you'd put that microscope away for half an hour; you look fagged to death."
Jack raised his head from the specimens. He had been straining his eyes over them ever since he came in from the hospital. On Saturday afternoons the work was always heavy in the crowded out-patients' department; and to-day, in the thick November fog and the reek of gas and damp humanity and unwashed clothing, he had begun, strong as he was, to feel tired and sick.
"You have no business cutting sections till you've had some dinner," said Molly; "you'll only cut them too thick, and get a headache as well."
"Oh, I'm all right; only the out-patients are so unreasonable. They will all talk at once on these foggy days. The poor things seem to get flurried, like the carthorses, with slipping about in the mud. I came in splashed up to my hat."
Molly put her arm round his neck. They had been living together for nearly four years now, and had learned to read each other as only close friends can read. No one else would have seen from the line of his mouth that he was depressed as well as tired.
"Is it bad news?" she asked softly, with her cheek against his hair.
"No, nothing in particular. I'm an idiot to get down in the mouth now, just when I've got a good appointment at last, and this big stroke of luck with the Medical Congress."
"Perhaps that's why. I never used to worry over weekly accounts in the days when we could't get enough to eat, as I do now with three pounds a week for housekeeping."
"You needn't worry, old girl; the last shilling's worth of debt will be cleared off next month. You see our difficulties are all over now; even the private practice is beginning to flourish."
She kissed him, laughing.
"And that's why you get the blues? You and I are contemptible frauds, Jack; our courage is only good for hard times; it all fizzles out at our fingers' ends at the first bit of prosperity."