"
It was. He pitched it past her into the fire.
"Light another," she pleaded. "I love them so. They are the kind he
always smoked. That's nearly the end of the story. You can almost guess
the rest. That very night Archie did get into a hole, a bad one, and the
only way my friend could lift him out was by getting down into it
himself. He saved him, but it was at his own expense; for it made people
begin to reflect. And in the end--in the end, when we came into harbour,
they came on board, and--and arrested him early in the morning--before I
knew. You see, he--he was Nat Verney."
Cynthia's dark head was suddenly bowed upon her hands. She was rocking
to and fro in the firelight.
"And it was my fault," she sobbed--"all my fault. If--if he hadn't done
that thing for me, no one would have known--no one would have
suspected!"
She had broken down completely at last, and the man who heard her
wondered, with a deep compassion, how often she had wept, in secret and
uncomforted, as she was weeping now.
He bore it till his humanity could endure no longer. And then, very
gently, he reached out, touched her, drew her to him, pillowed her head
on his shoulder.
"Don't cry, Cynthia," he whispered earnestly. "It's heart-breaking work,
dear, and it doesn't help. There! Let me hold you till you feel better.
You can't refuse comfort from an old friend like me."
She yielded to him mutely for a little, till her grief had somewhat
spent itself.
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