Livingston did not reply at once. His face was like marble in its impassiveness. The other’s soft tremulous tones, fearless yet moist eyes and broken sentences, appeared to awaken no response in his breast. Instead, a far-off gleam came into his blue eyes. At last he broke the silence with the words:

“You name it well; it is insanity indeed, for you to love this woman.”

“Why?” asked his friend, constrainedly.

“Because it is not for the best.”

“For her or me?”

“Oh, for her—!” he finished the sentence with an expressive gesture.

“I understand you, Aubrey. I should not have believed it of you. If it were one of the other fellows; but you are generally so charitable.”

“You forget your own words: Tramps, stray dogs and Negroes—,’” he quoted significantly. “Then there is your professional career to be considered,—you mean honorable, do you not?—How can you succeed if it be hinted abroad that you are married to a Negress?”

“I have thought of all that. I am determined. I will marry her in spite of hell itself! Marry her before she awakens to consciousness of her identity. I’m not unselfish; I don’t pretend to be. There is no sin in taking her out of the sphere where she was born. God and science helping me, I will give her life and love and wifehood and maternity and perfect health. God, Aubrey! You, with all you have had of life’s sweetness, petted idol of a beautiful world, you who will soon feel the heart-beats of your wife against your breast when lovely Molly is eternally bound to you, what do you know of a lonely, darkened life like mine? I have not the manner nor the charm which wins women. Men like me get love from them which is half akin to pity, when they get anything at all. It is but the shadow. This is my opportunity for happiness; I seize it. Fate has linked us together and no man and no man’s laws shall part us.”

Livingston sipped his wine quietly, intently watching Reuel’s face. Now he leaned across the table and stretched out his hand to Briggs; his eyes looked full into his. As their hands met in a close clasp, he whispered a sentence across the board. Reuel started, uttered an exclamation and flushed slowly a dark, dull red.

“How—where—how did you know it?” he stammered.

“I have known it since first we met; but the secret is safe with me.”

7 The phrase “There are few things—whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought—few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery.” is spoken by Roger Chillingworth in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850).

CHAPTER VI